What would make someone want to pay $20,000 a year to rent a “Bloomberg terminal”? Why would 315,000 people?
Back in 2008 when the financial markets went into free fall, Bloomberg overnight had a trading system ready to take over the commercial paper lending business, and implement other emergency programs for the US Treasury.
Bloomberg is apologizing that they were caught giving reporters access to non public data about how clients were using their system. Bloomberg makes around $7 billion a year by selling information to insiders.
And Martha Stewart is the person who went to jail?
Joe Kernan over at rival CNBC said today that Bloomberg llc might wish to reconsider its names for the Bloomberg morning programs. The show Bloomberg runs against Joe’s Bloomberg calls “Surveillance” and the show following it Bloomberg calls, “Inside the Loop”.
I have recommended the show Surveillance before and continue to do so. Its host, Tom Keene is excellent – I learn something new each time I watch.
You see, if you pay $20k a year, you become an authorized insider. You find out news the same time as the 314,999 other paying subscribers, and can trade on the news ahead of the general public not paying the $20k
The “insider trading” laws are less about protecting the public than protecting the specialists from being blindsided by some news that he doesn’t know first despite having the company CEO on speed dial
Absolutely. It is a money pump from the “have nots” to the “haves”. .. so is Quantitative Easing and many other hidden Fed programs.
My point being – if you have a millions of dollars to trade, the $20k for insider information is chump change. If you have $50k, your trades lose to the insiders.
It wasn’t the $20,000 / year subscribers that were the insiders. It was the Bloomberg reporters (et al) that had access to which subscribers (and how often and when) logged on to their terminals. It’s another unseemly reporter scandal and the managers at Bloomberg that allowed it to happen or may also have inappropriately used information they likewise obtained.
“CNBC on Saturday cited a former Bloomberg News employee as saying he had looked at use of the financial data and news company’s terminals use by Bernanke and Geithner.”
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2013-05-12/general/39198903_1_wall-street-journal-treasury-secretary-timothy-geithner-cnbc
Not sure what they did with the data or whether their news stories “with unnamed sources” are made available to the $20,000 subscribers before they are made available to the general public.
The real money is made by the upstanding folks in Congress, who know what the news is going to be, before it’s news to the rest of us pleebs.
You are right, Nidster, but it is not just Congress, it is government in general… including corruption in the the Executive branch and that scumbag Corzine.. No texting Weiners, please. 🙂
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/nyregion/weiners-wife-huma-abedin-failed-to-disclose-consulting-work-done-while-a-state-dept-aide.html?_r=0