Analysis: An elite Wall Street bank gets a $35 million lesson: Just call tech support

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The big banks on Wall Street suck, and highly educated people are being pulled from the top performers at the best business schools and universities in the world. They are elite and powerful. Sometimes, like everyone, they do something really stupid.

Here’s the deal: My colleague Matt Egan wrote that Morgan Stanley was just fined $35 million for a “shocking” failure to mishandle sensitive data on about 15 million customers .

mistake? Throwing away your old computer without wiping the hard drive.

In one incident described by the SEC, Morgan Stanley hired a moving company — which had “no experience or expertise” in data destruction — to retire thousands of hard drives and servers that hold customer data.

The company later sold thousands of such devices to third parties, some of which contained personally identifiable information. Ultimately, the devices, still loaded with sensitive data, ended up being sent to an auction site.

The SEC was rude when it laid out Morgan Stanley’s blunders.

Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement that its “failure in this case is appalling.” “If not properly protected, this sensitive information could end up in the wrong hands and have disastrous consequences for investors.”

So yeah, it’s stupid.But it’s important to note that the SEC has not charged any criminal conduct did happens, just it Could have been.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay the fine but did not admit or deny the findings in the settlement.

“We have previously notified applicable clients of these events that occurred several years ago and have not identified any unauthorized access or misuse of personal client information,” Morgan Stanley said in a statement.

Another way of saying it: As far as we know, we’re lucky that no bad actor has managed to take advantage of the data we’ve accidentally released to the public.

Free advice for the next time, all of you: call tech support! We can all be Luddites, folks – there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

We’re three-quarters past 2022, and the 2020 hangover is still hampering the auto industry.

Here’s the deal: Ford can’t do as many as 45,000 large pickups and SUVs right now because it doesn’t have all the parts…sound familiar? It should, as it has been for over two years.

The company warned late Monday that supply shortages and higher prices will cost it an additional $1 billion this quarter. Ford shares fell 12% on Tuesday.

The $25 trillion question this year is different from a) Are we in a recession? b) How bad would it be?

we have a real Interesting time trying to explain why the US is not in a recession right now, technically even after two consecutive quarters of negative growth. ICYMI: This oft-cited guideline has many caveats and is not a hard and fast rule. Anyone looking at the current labor market, with unemployment near record lows, and resilient consumer spending, logically this wouldn’t be called a recession.

This doesn’t mean the fear has disappeared.

Take FedEx, which sold off sharply late last week when it cut guidance and warned of a global economic downturn. It’s not alone. Earlier this month, the CEO of luxury home goods retailer RH, aka Restoration Hardware, said “anyone who thinks we’re not in a recession is crazy”, adding that the housing market is “just getting started” downturn. “Best Buy’s CFO eschewed the R-word but used that business jargon—”current macro environment trends may be more challenging”—that sounded the alarm.

Chip-equipment leader Applied Materials had other euphemisms to spook investors last month, saying some of its customers were in slowdown mode “as macro uncertainty and weakness in consumer electronics and PCs led to delays in those companies. some orders.”

These are ominous signs, my colleague Paul R. La Monica reports. More news is likely to come as the company prepares for its third-quarter earnings season next month.

Analysts and companies are already downgrading their outlooks, raising what could be the worst earnings outlook for the third quarter since the 2020 pandemic-induced economic shutdown.

So yeah, it’s not great. But it’s not as bad as it was in 2008. There is also a potential bright spot, Paul explained. The housing market looks set to slow rather than collapse like the 2007-08 subprime mortgage crisis.

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