The overpriced stock market now has to deal with not only a second major hurricane disaster and Korean nuke uncertainty but also a major privacy violation of regular Americans. Equifax is further compounding the uncertainty by not telling all customers if they are affected:
After revealing Thursday that a data breach had exposed personal information of 143 million Americans, Equifax Inc. asked customers to go to a special website to find out whether they were one of the unfortunate victims.
When trying the site, however, many seem to be getting no actual response to that question.
Tests conducted in the MarketWatch office and by Twitter users suggest that the system installed on a website Equifax EFX+0.94% set up specifically to respond to the massive breach is giving users three answers: Yes, probably not, or…no answer at all.
(www.marketwatch.com/...)
Furthermore, the appearances are not so swell on the fair dealing front:
Three Equifax Inc. senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered a security breach that may have compromised information on about 143 million U.S. consumers.
The trio had not yet been informed of the incident, the company said.
The credit-reporting service said late Thursday in a statement that it discovered the intrusion on July 29. Regulatory filings show that three days later, Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth $946,374 and Joseph Loughran, president of U.S. information solutions, exercised options to dispose of stock worth $584,099. Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, sold $250,458 of stock on Aug. 2. None of the filings lists the transactions as being part of 10b5-1 scheduled trading plans.
(www.bloomberg.com/...)
Trump knows Wall Street troubles will not be helped by debt ceiling battles and other clear indicia that Washington, D.C. is disfunctional. He is doing blame-shifting to Congressional Republican leadership while also signaling that he, on the other hand, will provide the appearance of some basic managerial competence.
He knows he can't weather a stock market crash if he's on the side of disfunction. The Trump bump of the stock market is coming to a screeching halt, with losses likely to be heavy. Main Street in several southern states that went Trump is hurting and fearful. Strange troubling times, and Trump is bailing on the Congressional Republican leadership, so he won't get the blame. Meanwhile, the true storm Trump fears, Mueller, ever approacheth.