bloomberg situation (repost from FB)
the scandal around Bloomberg journalists "spying" on GS employees as well as Bernanke and Geithner is utter bullshit. I had the privilege of working at Bloomberg R&D for 8 years. I had a very high level of production data access as well as done many audits of their systems internally at least since 2008 (let's say I had the type of access only granted to less than 1% of R&D staff).
Bloomberg (its technology arm called Bloomberg LP) actually cares about shit like confidentiality of customer data *a lot*. I have seen a number of projects squashed solely because it *could create an impression* of customer data misuse and confidentiality breach. They wouldn't even allow anonymous stats aggregation. At times I felt that the company was plain paranoid about this stuff.
On the other hand Bloomberg News arm of the holding does indeed care about market transparency. They routinely broke stories and used freedom of information laws to obtain documents from US Government agencies on things such as TARP.
So now when I read these stupid sensationalist stories in other news outlets (especially competition such as Thompson Reuters) I know it's all a load of horseshit. The only "conflict of interest" on the part of Bloomberg possible is that Bloomberg News may report shit that may present their core customers in negative light. Core customers being the likes of Goldman Sachs and the Fed, whose conflicts of interest happen to be of much less innocent nature.
As to the "substantive part" of the accusations leveled against Bloomberg News, to say that someone can "spy on Geithner" using his Bloomberg Terminal login times, ADSK (customer service) logs and function usage stats is dishonest, stupid or both.
I hope my former employer rides through this shitstorm with ease and at no loss. They are the best in their biz and their integrity should be beyond all doubts.
Bloomberg (its technology arm called Bloomberg LP) actually cares about shit like confidentiality of customer data *a lot*. I have seen a number of projects squashed solely because it *could create an impression* of customer data misuse and confidentiality breach. They wouldn't even allow anonymous stats aggregation. At times I felt that the company was plain paranoid about this stuff.
On the other hand Bloomberg News arm of the holding does indeed care about market transparency. They routinely broke stories and used freedom of information laws to obtain documents from US Government agencies on things such as TARP.
So now when I read these stupid sensationalist stories in other news outlets (especially competition such as Thompson Reuters) I know it's all a load of horseshit. The only "conflict of interest" on the part of Bloomberg possible is that Bloomberg News may report shit that may present their core customers in negative light. Core customers being the likes of Goldman Sachs and the Fed, whose conflicts of interest happen to be of much less innocent nature.
As to the "substantive part" of the accusations leveled against Bloomberg News, to say that someone can "spy on Geithner" using his Bloomberg Terminal login times, ADSK (customer service) logs and function usage stats is dishonest, stupid or both.
I hope my former employer rides through this shitstorm with ease and at no loss. They are the best in their biz and their integrity should be beyond all doubts.