Archive - Jan 8, 2011

As Zero Hedge wrote earlier, following revelations that the DOJ was going through line items of private data, including personal financial information on Twitter, WikiLeaks has demanded that Goldman darling Facebook as well as the firm that "does no evil" Google reveal any subpoenas they may have received, if any. And all signs point to yes: after all why would the DOJ go after just Twitter which is not a repository of any notable private data, unlike the other companies, one of which already has been in much hot water in the past due to its privacy policy, and especially now that Goldman's SPV has full access to who knows what information: courtesy of the brain dead parasitic zombies at the SEC nobody knows just who knows what vis-a-vis Goldman's "private placement." And since a positive answer will most likely not do anything good for the brand reputation of either firm, as it will be spun in the way that these firms not only did not disclose an incursion in user privacy, but only did so following a fluke act by Twitter, and may well be working behind the scenes with who knows who else on providing gobs of private data on a silver platter to whatever is the government's witch hunt organization du jour, then maybe, just maybe, the world's infatuation with MySpace v2 (and Friendster v3) may finally start to wane, explaining why just as there are buyers, no matter how wealthy and sophisticated, in Goldman's latest PR fiasco, so there are sellers, who just happen to be wealthier and more sophisticated.

Is mathematics a quantum leap forward compared to other methods of thinking? Sure. Its precision beats every other possible “system” and human intuition is limited by experience. One cannot “see” curves without tangents, nor intuit an n- dimensional space. But everyone lives and thinks with intuition in ordinary life. Successful trading is about buying cheap and selling dear: mathematical thinking is an indispensible means to that end. But it can also obscure intuition that necessarily deals with the inexact definitions of everyday life. Further, a mindset wholly engrossed in the mathematical development of an axiom base can take one far from practical relevance.

The DOJ, instead of pursuing actual threats to so-called justice, such as, among other, the fact that the entire US mortgage industry is based on churn-predicated fraud, that Goldman Sachs is an undisputed monopolist in the OTC market, and that JP Morgan uses its cartel power and FRBNY affiliation to control the commodity market, has decided to instead go after private user information on Twitter of all places. And while the excuse is that this is merely another expansion in the ongoing probe against that uber-terrorist organization Wikileaks (which as Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out is "doing nothing more than publishing classified information showing what the U.S. Government is doing: something investigative journalists, by definition, do all the time") it may have actually crossed the line by subpoenaning private data from an Icelandic member of parliament, Birgitta Jonsdottir, a one-time associate of Julian Assange. Furthermore, it appears that Twitter may be just one of many services which have received the DOJ subpoena (Wikileaks suspects that Google and Facebook are two other sites that may have received a Wikileaks-related subpoena but have so far not disclosed it), but is the only one which requested that the original order be unsealed. Most importantly, the question of just who Eric Holder consider a potential "threat" is completely unclear, which means that pretty much anyone can be the subject of complete disclosure of data previously considered private.One thing is certain: if anyone has ever donated to Wikileaks via Paypal or otherwise, they are now a target.

Federal Reserve Transit...