With this and the recent court case saying that it’s illegal to violate the terms of service of any website…we should all be a bit nervous. It’s the beginning of the end of web privacy.

Wired article

Chris Saad’s take on it:

Here’s the scary part

Facebook Connect proposes to make data and friend connections currently held within the walled garden of Facebook accessible to other services. This has two distinct benefits, one for the sites and one for Facebook.

For the participating sites, Facebook Connect provides more social functionality without a great deal of additional development. A new user can opt to share the profile information in Facebook instead of developing a new account. This gives the user access to the site and its services without the tedium of developing yet another profile on yet another site. In addition, users can use the relationship information in Facebook to connect to their friends on the other services. In short, it makes the new partner site an extension of Facebook.

Essentially, Facebook is trying to replace all logins with their own, and control the creation, distribution and application of the social graph using their proprietary platform.

treasury is talking about dropping mortgage rates to 4.5% …. awwww yeah!!!!!!

let’s do this!

..maybe you should keep making payments…at least for another month

Here’s my favorite quote from the Mercury News article (link above):

“It would be a dream come true,” said Cathy Warshawsky of Bay Area Loan in San Jose, the president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers. At rates of 4.5 percent for a fixed, 30-year loan, “We would have everybody and their brother who had equity in their homes coming to refinance. That would be an amazing influx of loan applications. It would keep things going for a long, long time.”

— yes, i did call it.

cnn

washington post
The Treasury is strongly considering a plan to intervene directly in the mortgage industry to dramatically force down rates and stimulate the moribund housing market, according to sources familiar with the proposal.

Under the initiative, the Treasury would offer to buy securities that finance newly issued loans for home purchases, according to the sources. But to participate in the government’s program, mortgage lenders would have to set exceptionally low interest rates, for instance, no more than 4.5 percent for traditional, 30-year fixed-rate loans.