Equifax Must Pay $18.6 Million After Failing to Fix Oregon Woman’s Credit Report
July 29th, 2013Via: The Oregonian:
A jury Friday awarded an Oregon woman $18.6 million after she spent two years unsuccessfully trying to get Equifax Information Services to fix major mistakes on her credit report.
The judgement, likely to be appealed, appears to be one of the largest awarded to a consumer in a case against one of the nation’s major credit bureaus.
Julie Miller of Marion County, who was awarded $18.4 million in punitive and $180,000 in compensatory damages, contacted Equifax eight times between 2009 and 2011 in an effort to correct inaccuracies, including erroneous accounts and collection attempts, as well as a wrong Social Security number and birthday. Yet over and over, the lawsuit alleged, the Atlanta-based company failed to correct its mistakes.
Research Credit: ottilie
Billionaire Steven Cohen Throws a Party Despite Indictment
July 29th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen did not let the filing of criminal charges against his $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors get in the way of a party this weekend at his vacation estate in tony East Hampton, New York.
The Saturday night party at Cohen’s 10-bedroom home on Further Lane took place two days after federal prosecutors in New York announced a five-count criminal indictment against SAC Capital that portrayed the 21-year-old Stamford, Conn.-based fund as a breeding ground for unlawful insider trading.
The lavish affair, which one source said included delivery of $2,000 worth of tuna from a local fish store to Cohen’s home, was planned before the charges were filed. A person familiar with the event said the party, attended by a few dozen people, was intended by the 57-year-old manager to show support for ovarian cancer research, though it was not a fundraiser.
Bank of Cyprus Depositors Lose 47.5% of Savings Over 100,000 Euros
July 29th, 2013Via: AP:
Depositors at bailed-out Cyprus’ largest bank will lose 47.5 percent of their savings exceeding 100,000 euros ($132,000), the government said Monday.
The figure comes four months after Cyprus agreed on a 23 billion-euro ($30.5 billion) rescue package with its euro partners and the International Monetary Fund. In exchange for a 10 billion euro loan, deposits worth more than the insured limit of 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and smaller lender Laiki were raided in a so-called bail-in to prop up the country’s teetering banking sector.
The savings raid prompted Cypriot authorities to impose restrictions on money withdrawals and transfers for all banks to head off a run. Christopher Pissarides, the Nobel laureate who heads the government’s economic advisory body, forecast Monday that the bank controls could be in place for another two years.
Recovery: 4 Out of 5 U.S. Adults Struggle with Joblessness, Near-Poverty or Reliance on Welfare
July 28th, 2013Can I get some green shoots with that?
Via: AP:
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
Halliburton to Plead Guilty to Destroying Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Evidence
July 28th, 2013You’ll think it’s comedy hour on Cryptogon this morning when you get to the part about the penalty.
Via: BBC:
US company Halliburton will plead guilty to destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Gulf Of Mexico oil spill.
The plea agreement, which is subject to court approval, means Halliburton will have to pay the maximum possible fine.
The spill occurred at BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico and was the worst in US history.
BP had accused Houston-based Halliburton, its contractor, of destroying evidence and asked it to pay for all damages.
The major oil spill three years ago followed a blast at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers.
“A Halliburton subsidiary has agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanour violation associated with the deletion of records created after the Macondo well incident, to pay the statutory maximum fine of $200,000 and to accept a term of three years probation,” the company said in a statement.
Halliburton is the third of three major companies at the heart of the oil spill to admit criminal wrongdoing. Oil giant BP and rig operator Transocean have already pleaded guilty to charges related to the disaster.
The Great Chinese British Firewall: Censorship Extends Beyond Pornography
July 28th, 2013If this was forced on me, here’s what I’d do (short of leaving the country): Manually whitelist a VPN provider in a more free country and then run everything through that connection.
I’m sure I’ll hear pretty quickly if cryptogon.com is blocked by default once this thing is up.
Via: IBT:
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron announced Monday that British Internet service providers (ISPs) must install porn filters and require customers to opt-in for adult content. Cameron said the policy is aimed at combating child porn and the “corroding influences” of sexual content in the U.K., but several people are unhappy with the plan. Reports have linked the filters to controversial Chinese company Huawei, and others have found that the filters will block much more than just porn. Some ISPs have publicly refused to force the filters on their users.
The Open Rights Group spoke with several ISPs and found that in addition to pornography, users will also be required to opt in for any content tagged as violent, extremist, terrorist, anorexia and eating disorders, suicide, alcohol, smoking, web forums, esoteric material and web-blocking circumvention tools. These will all be filtered by default, and the majority of users never change default settings with online services.
Spills at Alberta Oil Sands Operation
July 28th, 2013Via: The Star:
Oil spills at a major oil sands operation in Alberta have been ongoing for at least six weeks and have cast doubts on the safety of underground extraction methods, according to documents obtained by the Star and a government scientist who has been on site.
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. has been unable to stop an underground oil blowout that has killed numerous animals and contaminated a lake, forest, and muskeg at its operations in Cold Lake, Alta.
The documents indicate that, since cleanup started in May, some 26,000 barrels of bitumen mixed with surface water have been removed, including more than 4,500 barrels of bitumen.
The scientist said Canadian Natural Resources is not disclosing the scope of spills in four separate sites, which have been off bounds to media and the public because the operations are on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range, where there is active weapons testing by the Canadian military.
Research Credit: noguru
FBI Using Drones for Warrantless Surveillance Inside U.S.
July 28th, 2013Via: The Verge:
Earlier this year, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publicly revealed for the first time in a hearing that it has been using drones to conduct surveillance operations inside the country, a striking admission, given that domestic drone is a subject of intense debate and there’s still not a clear set of rules governing the practice. Now, under prodding from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the FBI has finally offered a few more details about its use of drones, namely, in how many cases it’s deployed them, and its rationale for not seeking a search warrant. “Since late 2006, the FBI has conducted surveillance using UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] in eight criminal cases and two national security cases,” wrote Stephen D. Kelly, the FBI’s assistant director for the Office of Congressional Affairs, in a letter to Paul. In a footnote added to this statement, Kelly explains drones were also approved in three other cases, but the FBI didn’t use them.
Egypt: Army Fires on Morsi Protestors, Many Dozens Dead
July 27th, 2013Via: Independent:
Egypt’s troubled transition reached a new nadir of bloodletting today when at least 70 supporters of toppled President Mohamed Morsi were gunned down during a sustained attack by the security services – three weeks after the army committed a similar massacre in nearly exactly the same spot.
Doctors at the scene said they believed more than 100 people may have been killed. An exact tally has not yet been confirmed, but the massacre ranks as one of the worst single incidents of violence since the fall of Hosni Mubarak two and a half years ago.
Off Topic: Assuming Access to Data Feeds for Dozens of Futures Contracts, Can You Think of a Way to Build a Sort of Half Ass NYSE Tick?
July 27th, 2013Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
I had a free month of market data from IQfeed, and I found NYSE Tick (JTNT.Z on IQfeed, $TICK on TradeStation) to be pretty interesting. Displayed as a histogram, I was using it gauge extremes. Additionally, summing the (h+l+c)/3 and displaying that along with an AverageFC of it made for a pretty nifty sentiment indicator.
In the meantime, I opened an account with a futures broker that includes free realtime feeds for a lot of different futures contracts, but that’s it. No continuous symbols/no expired contract data. No NYSE Tick, for example. It’s actually incredible what I’m getting for free with this arrangement, when you look at what TradeStation or IQfeed, including CME and ICE, costs.
As of now, I’m not sure if trading the ES is any different than drunken riverboat gambling, and I’m not even willing to spend any money on the more expensive feeds to find out. I’m essentially playing around with the data and the simulator (which I can use for free with my funded futures account) to see if I can find anything interesting. Of course, the sim means pretty much nothing. All of this said, I kinda miss those NYSE Tick widgets that I coded. Looking at the list of futures that I have access to, I started to wonder if I could make something that might work like NYSE Tick out of all of this crap.
Right now, I’m looking at ES with various sizes of tick and volume bars and the 30 minute interval. Same with TF. To these, I apply yesterday’s open, high, low, close, the initial balance from the New York session, the standard pivot points and some Xaverages. It’s an effing mess, man, but the tick and volume charts are sort of like bullet time from The Matrix for when the black boxes unfurl. Instead of that time based candle wildly blinking red and green—like some sort of broken Christmas tree light—during bursts of heavy activity, you get more candles. I don’t know if anyone is just using time based bars anymore, but if you haven’t checked out tick and volume bars, they’re definitely interesting.
Do you trade the ES successfully? If you feel like reveling which other markets/indices you consider when making trading decisions, go ahead and leave a comment or email me.
