20120809-075537.jpgGood morning

The headlines:

  1. China’s inflation eases for the fourth consecutive month.

    Link: so this stimulus isn’t working then.

    I’ll admit that the economic data gets a bit boring. “slowing production data” and “deceleration in consumer price gains”.

    The point really being that it looks like China, according to the Chinese Government Statistics Department*, is feeling a bit pessimistic this morning.

    Needs a stimulating cup of interest rate adjustments.

    *About as reliable as campaign promise. I kept trying to come up with snappy names: the StatisNOTics Dept? The Ministry of Statismagic? 

  2. Zynga Chief Operating Officer resigns.

    Link: someone threw a sheep shot?

    Not so long ago, we were all not-very-surprised by Zynga’s poor performance. And in response to the standard “it can’t be the business model – it MUST be the directors” line, Mr COO John Schappert got relieved of some of his responsibilities.

    And by “some of his responsibilities”, what Zynga means is “the responsibility for overseeing game development”. And given that Zynga is in the business of game development, I’d like to know what they expected the Chief Operating Officer to oversee if he wasn’t going to be overseeing operations.

    No wonder he then decided to leave.

    Anyway – seeing as Mr Schappert was the only guy on the board with any gaming industry experience (he was an Electronic Arts man with a $42 million a year salary package), this will probably not be taken well.

    Cue, the share price graph:

    It seems that there’s a little ambivalence over the last few days. Perhaps we need the market to open…

    Then again. How low can the share price possibly go?

  3. StanChart’s CEO says that there’re no grounds to revoke their licence.

    Link: “We’re not a rogue bank – he’s a rogue regulator!”

    “There are lots of matters in [the report] that frankly either we don’t recognise or we don’t understand or are factually inaccurate”.

    And then talk of suing for reputational damage.

    Does it strike anyone as strange that the normal regulatory agencies are remaining quiet? Like the federal regulators?

    It’s certainly striking the Brits as strange. Both the Mayor of London and the Governor of the Bank of England have reacted by accusing the New York Department of Financial Services of trying to sully the reputation of a rival Financial Center (being the City of London).

    It’s always fun when these things get political.

  4. Apple boosts security.

    Link: such a hack.

    A journalist somewhere recently wrote an article about how his apple id and iphone and macbook and anything-password-related were hacked through an Apple call centre.

    So Apple has now suspended the ability to change the passwords over the phone. Which, frankly, I didn’t even know you could do!

    Although, the part of the story that doesn’t feature in the headline: the hackers got Apple to change this guy’s Apple ID by first accessing the last four digits of his credit card from Amazon, and then using that to prove identity to the Call Centre.

    The real question: why does Apple accept the last 4 digits as a secure identification if Amazon feels free to display them?

    Sidebar: never buying from Amazon again.

    Second sidebar: now entirely paranoid about anything-password-related.

That’s all for now.

Have a good day.