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April 3rd, 2010
James Sikes is a real estate executive who recently claimed that he sped out of total control on the Interstate 8 in his 2008 Toyota Prius. He claims that the brakes wouldn’t work and he would not stop. Now, the story is all over the media.
Fortunately, Sikes got to call 911 for 23 minutes while a highway patrolman advised him to use both the foot brake and parking brake together to stop the car.
Naturally, there have been mistakes in the media coverage all over the nation. But it seems that Sikes had tried to service his Prius for a recall, but got turned down. However, such second-generation Priuses had never been called to dealerships. It was the 2010 Prius that got recalled; still, this was for software problems because of brake feel and not acceleration problems.
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Tags: bankruptcy
Posted in Economy | No Comments »
April 3rd, 2010
The efforts to economic recovery does not seem to have slowed down the filings of bankruptcy. In fact, these seem to have surged last month compared to what it was last year. They are also higher compared to the cases that were filed the month before last.
The overhang of debt and stress from ages of spending now has an impact that is more acute due to the troubling times of the economy. This financial distress is what is making more Americans file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If approved, the court will end up discharging the majority of unsecured consumer debt, such as credit card bills.
After the strict bankruptcy law of 2005, a huge objective was to make more families depend on Chapter 13 bankruptcy that required them to repay their debts in part or in full in the years to come. In general, people file for this kind of bankruptcy if they have a home to save.
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April 3rd, 2010
While President Barack Obama talks to congressional leaders about immigration reform, it would be vital to remember that this kind of a reform can give the American economy the boost it so desperately needs. Despite what other people believe, immigration happens to be an economic resource that can actually greatly benefit both native-born and immigrant workers. A comprehensive package of immigration reform with ways for unauthorized immigrants to get legal status will increase their overall wages, and thus also their tax contributions and purchasing power; this would support tons of American jobs during a rise of unemployment and bring about a lot of money in federal revenue during a gape in budget deficits.
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April 3rd, 2010
With the rate of unemployment still high and worries about a jobless recovery growing, Congress has recently passed a law that promises to bring back travel, a vital part of the economy. The best part is that this plan for stimulus will not cost taxpayers anything. As a matter of fact, it might even lower the budget deficit of the government and increase federal revenues.
The Travel Promotion Act, as the bill has been dubbed, creates a brand new public and private partnership to promote America as a prime destination for travelers worldwide and educate them regarding American security procedures.
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Tags: jobs, Travel, unemployment
Posted in Economy | No Comments »
April 3rd, 2010
Political consensus says that President Obama has been handling the economy quite weakly; but since he took office, there has been a surge in commodity prices, a narrowing of credit spreads, and a stabilization of housing prices. In fact, the economy as a whole has gotten stronger than anyone ever expected.
Because of this, the Federal Reserve definitely deserves tons of credit. Just last year, there was a lot of worry and panic and most people expected not just a decline in overall activity for 2010, but the same outlook for 2011.
Since those worries, however, monthly losses of jobs have gone down to 36,000 from 779,000 when Obama took office. The corporate profits have gone up; inflation is rather tame; and long-term rates of interest are still low.
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Tags: budget deficit, Federal Reserve
Posted in Economy | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2010
A trio of identity thieves with almost two dozen criminal charges of $2 million dollars in total were charged by prosecutors recently, thanks to technology of credit card skimming at gas pumps. All of them were finally arrested after a three-year long investigation and all of them are faced with numerous counts of identity theft, conspiracy, computer access fraud and grand theft.
The suspects pleaded not guilty and are currently held with $2 million in bail each for installing skimming devices on gas station pay pumps to record debit and credit card information from unsuspecting customers. They then harvested this information through computer downloads afterwards.
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Posted in Credit Cards | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2010
Because of today’s challenging economy, the government has asked for changes to be made on how business is done between credit card companies and card holders. This is mainly to make students aware of such changes. In fact, a legislation has been passed for them.
This legislation states that after getting a bill, credit card companies should extend the time to two weeks longer after that for people to make payments. The government also asked these companies to stop being so aggressive with their interest rate changes on card finance charges.
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Tags: interest rate
Posted in Credit Cards | No Comments »
March 22nd, 2010
Do you think it’s good news that America has cut almost a hundred billion dollars when it comes to credit card debt in 2008 and 2009? Things aren’t exactly as they seem. Instead of turning completely frugal, consumers have actually fallen behind even more on their bills last year, bringing about a surge in charge-offs of debts.
See, whenever consumers end up paying back more money, this would show that the financial health is stable and good. However, last year’s analysis shows that bank charge-offs have actually reached their peak – something that hasn’t happened in two decades. (Charge-offs happen after consumers declare themselves bankrupt or if credit card debts are past due by at least 180 days.) Studies show that most of these credit card debt decreases can be blamed on writing off bad debt.
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Tags: credit card debts
Posted in Credit Cards | No Comments »
March 12th, 2010
The Federal Reserve Board’s No. 2 official has recently announced his upcoming retirement, thus giving President Barack Obama the historic chance to reshape the future of central banks through this powerful economic body.
This sudden change seems to come about at a period of historic transformation. Within the last few years, the Federal Reserve has tried very hard to contain financial crises and build up the overall economy. Now, it has to decide when and how to wind several emergency measures down.
Its governors will now take part in the reshaping of the regulatory approach of the central bank, as well, to attempt to avoid similar crises in the future and avoid congressional attempts to bring about greater monetary policy oversights and take away the power of the board in bank supervisions – definitely a significant part of the Fed’s history.
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Tags: banks, Federal Reserve
Posted in Economy | No Comments »
March 12th, 2010
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman, believes that he has the ultimate elegant solution for banks that are too large to fail: place the bank accounts of the bankers on the line.
Buffett is not happy with the damage brought about by unaccountable and overpaid bigwigs in the financial industry and has therefore been criticizing these overreaching corporate directors and managers for a while now. However, the problem regarding how to bring about great corporate behavior has reached a new high as debate goes on if financial giants should be reined in if their missteps had helped bring the economy down.
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Tags: banks, Warren Buffett
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