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Another Attack, On Law Firm Suing China
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter, is suing the government of China and several Chinese companies for using their intellectual property in the infamous Green Dam censorship filter. According to the firm, they have been targeted by a spear phishing attack from China." Relatedly, smartaleckkill writes with news that the US state department is to formally protest to China over the alleged cyber-attacks on Google, "likely early next week."
I am actually glad to see that lawsuits over software patents aren't being used for silly purposes to remove competition. Cyber sitter could have put together this lawsuit long ago, but they go in on the heels of the google hacking fiasco they got caught in.
What do software patents have to do with anything? This is a copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation lawsuit and it was filed BEFORE Google went public with their issues.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, T-bills are auctioned off in lots. That's how their price is set, actually: the US government actions off a batch of notes to paid off at a particular price after a particular time, (say, $1,000,000 after 30 years). Investors bid against each other, and the one willing to pay the highest price for the note wins.
Of course, the price paid for a treasury ends up being slightly below the face value of the note. That's mathematically equivalent to the government paying interest on the loan when it's repaid. (Of course, individual investors usually don't hold treasuries to term themselves, but instead sell them to others.)
That's where the interest rate on the US debt comes from: the higher the demand for US treasury securities, the higher the price, and the lower the government's effective interest rate.
Since US treasuries are considered the safest securities around, because the US has never defaulted, demand for treasuries is usually high, and especially high in times of economic sluggishness like the present. During the worst of the financial crisis, the prices paid for treasuries exceeded their face value, which meant investors were literally paying the US government to hold onto their money.
All this means that the US government can borrow very cheaply and in massive quantities. If China were to stop participating in treasury auctions, there are plenty of investors who would sake up the slack. The only effect would be that due to a reduction in competition, the bid price would be slightly lower, which would correspond to a slightly higher interest rate.
No big deal.