XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World: 10/23/10

Saturday, 23 October 2010

Germany Calls Out Geithner's Hypocrisy - said Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is “wrong way” to stimulate growth

Germany Calls Out Geithner's Hypocrisy - said Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is “wrong way” to stimulate growth

And just so there is no confusion as to whether Germany's critcisms will gain steam, below is Zero Hedge's projection of what the Fed's balance sheet will soon look like.

After months of US bitching and moaning about China's so called unfair exchange policies, when it is the US Fed which is the biggest currency manipulator in the world by orders of magnitude, one country finally had the guts to stand up and call out Tim Geithner on his endless bullshit. At the G-20 meeting, per Bloomberg, German Economic Minister Rainer Bruederle said that the Fed's "push toward easier monetary policy is the “wrong way” to stimulate growth and may amount to a manipulation of the dollar. Excessive, permanent money creation in my opinion is an indirect manipulation of an exchange rate." The fact that China was smart enough to peg its currency to the most rapidly devaluing currency in the world is a different story altogether, and merely confirms that they are leap and bounds more sophisticated in their monetary policy than anyone gives them credit for. If Geithner wants to prevent a relative depreciation of the Yuan versus all other currencies in the world (especially the EUR, against which it continues to be in freefall), the answer is simple: stop bloody printing!

And with Tim Geithner present, could the G20 meeting possibly not end up being a total farce? Of course not:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner dismissed prospects of mounting criticism of the Fed’s approach in his press conference after the G-20 meeting yesterday. When asked whether he expected Germany’s criticisms to gain steam, he replied: “I do not.”

In the future, when asked if he ever had problems with being called an idiot and a moron by virtually everyone, Tim Geithner will have the same reply.

And the stand cup comedy continued.

The Treasury chief declined to comment directly on the Fed’s policy, while also saying that major economies like the U.S. need to make growth a top priority. One of the global imbalances is the disparity between rapidly expanding emerging- market economies and too-slow growth in developed nations, he said.

“We are going to continue to try to strengthen the recovery under way so we can dig out of this as quickly as we can,” Geithner said.

In other words, the Fed will celebrate the recovery "under way" by printing another $1.5 trillion in money.

It has gotten so bad that Germany is now directly siding with Brazil which spat in the face of America and decided to not even show up, demonstrating just what it thinks of Geithner's endless hypocrisy.

Low interest rates and weak recoveries in industrialized economies such as the U.S. have forced investors to flood emerging markets with capital, providing resources for growth yet also threatening to spur inflation, asset bubbles and over- valued exchange rates. Such concerns have prompted economies from South Korea to Brazil to take steps to slow the inflow of speculative cash.

“I’m not a friend of this but I can understand” why Brazil introduced capital controls, Bruederle said.

Facebook 'accidentally outing gay users' to outside firms through targeted ads -

Facebook might be inadvertently outing its gay users to advertisers, according to a new study.

Researchers have discovered that different targeted advertising is being sent to users’ accounts if they have described themselves as gay or straight.

The discovery could mean that people who wish to keep their sexuality private may be sharing it with advertisers without their knowledge.

The loophole is yet another example of a Facebook privacy breach after it emerged that millions of pieces of personal information were being shared without users’ consent after using popular apps.

A team from Microsoft and Germany's Max Planck Institute created six fake profiles: two straight men, two straight women, a gay man and a lesbian. They wanted to see if Facebook targeted ads based on sexuality, and so the profiles were left otherwise completely the same.

The team then monitored what ads each virtual user was sent over a period of a week.

They found that the ads displayed on the gay man's profile differed substantially from those on the straight one. Many of these adverts were not obviously adverts for services that only gay men would require, and half of them did not mention the word ‘gay’ in the text.

The researchers say that this means people who click on the adverts from their Facebook profile will not know that they were targeted for that ad because of the sexual orientation and so by clicking through on the ad are effectively ‘outing’ themselves.

This means that the advertising firms now know if they are gay even if this aspect of their profile has been hidden from public view.

The researchers write in the paper: ‘The danger with such ads, unlike the gay bar ad where the target demographic is blatantly obvious, is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual-preference and a unique identiﬁer (cookie, IP address, or email address if he signs up on the advertiser's site).’

The loophole means that any advertisers who collect data such as Facebook IDs could match a person’s sexual preference with their unique ID and their name.

A Facebook spokesman said: 'Our advertising guidelines prohibit advertisers from using user data collected from running an ad on Facebook, including information derived from targeting criteria.

'For example, we explicitly prohibit them from associating that targeting detail with the data collected from the user in forms they fill out, applications they make, or other interactions on their site. We also require that targeting of ads based on a user attribute be directly relevant to the offer in the advertisement.

'We take the privacy of our users very seriously and take immediate action when violations of these policies come to our attention. We don’t provide any personally identifiable information to advertisers and we recommend that people always exercise caution when filling out forms about themselves online.

'We have no evidence that the advertisers mentioned in this study sought to collect information about people using Facebook, but we encourage people to report any advertisements that they suspect may be doing so.'

Last week it emerged that vast amounts of data – including the names of individual members and their online ‘friends’ – were passed to internet advertising firms, with tens of millions of people thought to have been affected.

The leaks were possible even when members had deliberately set their privacy options to the maximum secrecy levels.

The practice violates Facebook’s own rules on data protection and will raise questions about the company’s ability to keep information about its members’ activities secure.

Security experts warned that the details could be used – when combined with other publicly available information – to build up a detailed picture of an individual’s interests, friendship circle and lifestyle.

Around 25 different advertising and data firms were receiving the information, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal found.

It was passed to them by firms whose ‘apps’ – games and other features – operate on Facebook and not by the social networking site itself.

Using the data allows advertisers to better target individuals with promotion for specific product.