Week InReview

Holiday Season Tech Gift Guide


The Problems We Can Solve: A Tech Gift Guide
- The Wall Street Journal
Friday | Nov 23, 2018
The poker aces playing a key hand in the $5 trillion ETF market
On City Avenue in  the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, across the street from a TGI Fridays and California Pizza Kitchen, sits a bland building that looks like any other corporate office.  And yet within that dull gray-brown edifice, away from the trading hubs of New York and Chicago, sits a crucial engine of the $5 trillion global exchange-traded fund market. (Bloomberg Markets | Nov 20)

Surveying the damage in stocks
Stocks are getting massacred. Absolutely slaughtered. Pounded into submission. Markets are in turmoil. Investors are panicked, shellshocked and dare I say, jittery. These are some of the words and phrases you hear bandied about when stocks are in the midst of a freefall. Fun times. (A Wealth of Common Sense | Nov 20)

Big U.S. banks get to keep $5 billion more a year thanks to FDIC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said lenders will no longer have to pay quarterly surcharges that cover some of the costs of insuring their customers' deposits. Megabanks shell out the lion's share of such payments, which amount to about $5.2 billion annually. (Bloomberg Markets | Nov 20)

The booming loan market for highly indebted companies has faced a lot of scrutiny in recent months. The IMF has repeatedly aired its grievances. Multiple central banks, as well as the banker of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements, have chimed in with their concerns as well. (Financial Times | Nov 20)  

Fed's banking watchdog said poised to lead global regulator
U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles is expected to succeed Bank of England Governor Mark Carney as chair of the Financial Stability Board, a key global financial regulator. Quarles, the U.S. central bank's head of supervision, will take the helm of the Basel-based FSB for three years, while maintaining his responsibilities at the Fed . (Bloomberg Markets | Nov 19)
Revising uncleared swap margin regs
CFTC approves QFC rules
(Nov 19) -- The CFTC approved a final rule to amend its uncleared swap margin requirements, a move the agency said aims to better align with rules adopted by the Fed and other financial regulators. The regulations, known as QFC rules and embraced by the Federal Reserve, FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) and OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), impose restrictions on certain qualified financial contracts. The final rule amendments will become effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.
The Cyber Cafe
Cybersecurity news every Friday
AI can create synthetic fingerprints that fool biometric scanners
DeepMasterPrints - that can dupe systems that only compare partial prints - replicated 23 percent of fingerprints in a system that supposedly has an error rate of one in a thousand. When the false match rate was one in a hundred, they were able to mimic real prints 77 percent of the time.

Employees' cybersecurity habits worsen, survey finds
Almost all young people recycle their passwords, often doing so across work and personal accounts. According to a 2018 global survey from SailPoint, employees are getting lazy about cybersecurity despite increased risks associated with cyberattacks. Recycling passwords and using unauthorized software were the worst offenses and, surprisingly, millennials were the least likely to take precautions.

Russian 'Cozy Bear' hacking group likely phishing culprit
FireEye researchers tied a spear phishing campaign to APT29, a group often referred to as "Cozy Bear." The hackers were targeting U.S. think tanks, the military, federal government and law enforcement, among other sectors.
The Hill
Binge reading disorder
Hand-curated, chosen with love
The bond market is no longer making any sense
"I don't think last week's dose of Fedspeak moved the needle much on the likely course of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes next year. Barring a sharper slowdown in the U.S. economy than most forecasters expect, we should brace for the federal funds target rate to be about a percentage point higher by the end of the year than it is now. On that basis, it looks as though the bond market has stopped making sense." - John Authers

Selfish people earn less money than generous people
It turns out that being selfish isn't really in your own best interest if your goal is to earn a lot of money. Sometimes the greatest gifts you can give someone - advice, encouragement, a business introduction - don't  cost you a dime. But when you need help down the road, those gifts you gave can pay off big time.
Quartz

Putin's indicted 'chef' descends on Africa, mercenaries in tow
The secretive businessman known as Vladimir Putin's "chef" for his Kremlin catering work is alleged to have helped Russia seize parts of Ukraine, turn the tide in the Syrian war and meddle in U.S. elections. Now he's reaching deep into Africa with an army of mercenaries and spin doctors in tow to cash in on his newfound expertise.
The Moscow Times