Like many small businesses, we’ve been using credit cards when necessary to fund operations. It’s no surprise that BoA just sent us a change to our perpetually self modifying cardholder agreement stating our APR on purchases is rising 4%. Not as bad as I’ve seen happen to others, but ridiculous nonetheless. Ultimately as these punitive [...]
The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials. The looting of the public continues, aided by the Obama Administration. (I almost typed Bush. Wow.)
As explained in On the Urgency of Restructuring Bank and Mortgage Debt, and of Abandoning Toxic Asset Purchases: Indeed, the only way for the toxic asset sale to increase shareholder equity is if the buyer overpays for the asset. To accomplish this, the Geithner plan creates a speculative incentive for private investors, by effectively offering [...]
As Timothy Geithner has apty demonstrated, if you’re well commected, you get a free pass for tax evasion; and a promotion to manage the department that includes the IRS. In further evidence that being wealthy gives you a pass, the IRS is apparently going to give tax cheats who hide their assets offshore a free [...]
Enough is fucking enough. What the fucking fuck? While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens. This ought to disspell any notion that [...]
Need to import your credit card transactions from your bank? Having trouble getting it to work? Looks like your bank didn’t pay Intuit’s extortion fee. (Actually, you didn’t pay — most banks charge you for this header in their QBO export on Intuit’s behalf.) As it happens, however, your OFX file is very nearly exactly [...]
From Duh, Hedge Funds Bought AIG Credit Default Swaps Too: But this truly intelligence-insulting bit from the Treasury secretary is this: “We will impose on AIG a contractual commitment to pay the Treasury from the operations of the company the amount of retention rewards just paid,” Geithner wrote. “In addition, we will deduct from the [...]
Nothing is quite as enraging as being told it’s for my own good to get fucked over by AIG’s banksters by bankster tool Sorkin at the New York Times. After being told repeatedly that union workers at the Big Three need to agree to all manner of benefit cuts and have their contracts renegotiated, it’s [...]
I was relatively happy with South Trust, before it was bought by Wachovia back in 2005. I ended up with their Crown Banking Checking for whatever reason, which seemed like a good deal at the time. Unfortunately, it requires a $4,000 minimum balance, which carries an opportunity cost of higher interest elsewhere. For ages, it [...]
BAWHAHAHA! Seriously. Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules. But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides [...]