RTS: Update Aug 9th: More Data, spying, and transparency

RTS: Update Aug 9th: More Data, spying, and transparency
August 9, 2013

http://removingtheshackles.blogspot.com/2013/08/update-aug-9th-more-data-spying-and.html

Goooooood Morning!! (or evening for my ozzie friends!)

I've been away from the computer for the most part this week, although I did take a few hours to try to catch up on the over 800 emails in my in box- (if you emailed me before July 28.... I'm afraid that your email most likely got deleted- it was an act of desperation), and catching up with the on going conversations in the various skype rooms, and reading reading reading....

More transparency coming out this week from all sorts of sources and a couple of these articles are very pointed in the data that they are outing. I have two articles that I'm currently working on, but for the moment... here is some reading material- all the latest bits of news this week that the research crew and a few others dug up. Again, the hugest hug to the research team who are just going gangbusters and digging up so much stuff!!

My comments in Purple.

First off, a man in Russia decides he doesn't' like the "fine print" of the credit card application he's given, so he writes in his own terms and conditions .... I'm pretty sure Tinkoff Credit systems isn't the only credit card company that just rubber stamps these "applications" (actually a contract).

http://rt.com/business/man-outsmarts-banks-wins-court-221/

A Russian man who decided to write his own small print in a credit card contract has had his changes upheld in court. He's now suing the country's leading online bank for more than 24 million rubles ($727,000) in compensation.

Disappointed by the terms of the unsolicited offer for a credit card from Tinkoff Credit Systems in 2008, a 42-year-old Dmitry Agarkov from the city of Voronezh decided to hand write his own credits terms.
The trick was that Agarkov simply scanned the bank’s document and ‘amended’ the small print with his own terms.

He opted for a 0 percent interest rate and no fees, adding that the customer "is not obliged to pay any fees and charges imposed by bank tariffs." The bank, however, didn’t read ‘the amendments’, as it signed and certified the document, as well as sent the man a credit card. Under the agreement, the bank OK'd to provide unlimited credit, according to Agarkov’s lawyer Dmitry Mikhalevich talking to Kommersant daily.
"The opened credit line was unlimited. He could afford to buy an island somewhere in Malaysia, and the bank would have to pay for it by law," Mikhalevich added.

Agarkov also changed the URL of the site where the terms and conditions were published and hedged against the bank’s breaking of the agreement. For each unilateral change in the terms provided in the agreement, the bank would be asked to pay the customer (Agarkov) 3 million rubles ($91,000), or a cancelation fee of 6 million rubles ($182,000).....

This one was one of my favorites this week.... I giggled my ass off!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-signs-your-financial-adviser-is-a-zombie-2013-08-08?link=mw_test001_skynet

5 signs Wall Street’s zombie apocalypse is at hand
Commentary: Undead money pros mindlessly repeating upbeat phrases


By Brett Arends
A reader writes:
“Please help me. I have just finished watching ‘The Walking Dead’ on AMC and ‘World War Z’ in the cinema, and I’ve started to suspect that my money manager may be a zombie. I’ve been watching business TV and I think a lot of the people on Wall Street must be zombies as well. How can I be sure? Are there any tell-tale signs?”

— Yours, Terrified in Tuscaloosa

Dear Terrified,
Thanks for your email. I think you are on to something.
Some of us have suspected for a number of years that the Zombie Apocalypse has begun. (Have you noticed, for example, how few people actually think any more? They’re just walking around like… well, like zombies.)

Ryan Jorgensen - Jorgo / e
It’s especially bad on Wall Street. Actually, a zombie epidemic would explain a lot—especially the tendency of financial commentators to be so nonsensically upbeat.

If you study zombie-lore from Haiti, you’ll find that classic zombies have lost all free will. They are basically automatons, doing the same things, over and over again, mindlessly.

Does that remind you of the denizens of any Street you know?

Unlike a zombie, most M.B.A. money-managers can actually form complete sentences, but what they have to say isn’t much more intelligent than the grunting of a B-movie monster. Here are five phrases that are a surefire giveaway you’re dealing with a financial zombie.

1. “Mmmmwwaaaahhhh.... Cash on sidelines... market going higher.”
You can pretty much switch on any business program on TV during market hours and hear this sentence being repeated like a mantra. Guess what? There is no “money on the sidelines” waiting to come into this market and magically drive share prices further up. There can’t be. Why not? Because every time someone buys a share, someone else has to sell it to them. As a result, the share and the cash simply change hands. No money has “come into” the market at all.

This is a matter of simple logic, yet the cash-on-the-sidelines mantra refuses to die. What is the explanation? Zombies!

2. “Aaaarrrgghhh... great rotation coming... out of bonds... into stocks.”
This is a first cousin of the “money on the sidelines” argument. This argument is that “everyone” is loaded up to the gunwales with bonds and that they are all going to sell their bonds and buy stocks. Alas, the premise is nonsense for exactly the same reason that the “cash-on-the-sidelines” argument is nonsense. “Everyone” can’t sell bonds and buy stocks, because every time someone sells a bond, someone else has to buy it, and every time someone buys a stock, someone else has to sell it. The cards change hands, but the deck remains the same. Zombie!.....

This article by AK caused a lot of discussion- albeit mostly uproariously laughing...... Well.... they have to fund the RV somehow, right?

http://americankabuki.blogspot.com/2013/08/costa-rica-news-flying-high-with-24.html

This post was way too long and formatted to even attempt to try and copy the whole thing over lol. Click here to see the rest on D's blog.