Now that the Senate has repealed the ethanol tax credit, what does this mean for farmers and the US Federal Debt? Cynthia Bowers reports on the ongoing debate.
Duration : 0:2:22
Categories
Pages
Tags
All
Audio
bankruptcy
Bloomberg
Bond
Budget
card
cards
consolidation
counseling
credit
credit card debt
credit cards
credit counseling
Crisis
debt
debt consolidation
debt help
debt management
debt reduction
debt relief
debt settlement
Economic
Economy
English
Euro
Europe
finance
financial
Government
Greece
Help
loan
loans
management
Market
Media
money
Multimedia
news
Reduction
relief
settlement
Video
Visual
Archives
Meta
Senate votes to repeal ethanol tax credit
Moody’s: U.S. faces default on debt payments not ‘technical’
Steven Hess, senior credit analyst at Moody’s, sees a low probability of a U.S. default, but if Congress does delay on its payments, there will be nothing “technical” about the possible default.
Duration : 0:6:7
Humes Expects `Some Form of Reprofiling’ of Greek Debt
June 20 (Bloomberg) — Hans Humes, president of Greylock Capital Management, discusses Greece’s debt crisis and the prospects for restructuring its debt.
He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness With Margaret Brennan.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Duration : 0:3:28
Catwalk Empire – Indonesia
Indonesia’s corrupt banking sector poised for boom
To see more go to http://www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures
Follow us on Facebook (http://goo.gl/YRw42) or Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/journeymanvod)
With 60,000 millionaires the cash is splashing around in Indonesia. Yet recently their playground has been invaded by two major scandals that reveal the full extent of the country’s endemic corruption.
Malinda Dee’s smile is immovable as she walks down the catwalk, in a luxuriant green dress, her neck covered in diamonds. Yet behind this polished look lies the story of a major banking scandal. A former employee at Citibank, Malinda is now in jail awaiting trial for allegedly stealing from her clients – something even her lawyer has not denied: “Malinda would use the clients’ money, then she would return it”. She was allowed to carry on unchecked by Citibank because of the number of high-profile clients she brought in. Yet while the bank was losing millions and not even noticing at the top end, at the other end its heavy-handed tactics cast a dark cloud over the country. Irzen Octa had accrued a credit card debt of $5,000 and was subject to intimidation by Citibank’s debt collectors. When he visited his local bank branch he ended up dead. “Lots of people have the same experience of being terrorised”, says Octa’s wife. Yet despite the corruption, big credit rating agencies are about to pump billions of investment into the system. “Whether it’s a dark alley of debt collectors or the Ferraris of Malinda, it just shows how acceptable it is in this country to make money by any means.”
A Film By ABC Australia
Distributed By Journeyman Pictures
June 2011
Duration : 0:25:5
PBS Frontline Secret History of the Credit Card
In “Secret History of the Credit Card,” FRONTLINE® and The New York Times join forces to investigate an industry few Americans fully understand. In this one-hour report, correspondent Lowell Bergman uncovers the techniques used by the industry to earn record profits and get consumers to take on more debt.
“The almost magical convenience of plastic money is critical to our famously compulsive consumer economy,” Bergman says. “With more than 641 million credit cards in circulation and accounting for an estimated $1.5 trillion of consumer spending, the U.S. economy has clearly gone plastic.”
Millions of American families use their personal, general-purpose credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover to make ends meet; credit cards have been a discreet lifeline for families in financial straits.
But other consumers, like actor and author Ben Stein, use plastic purely for convenience. While it would appear that Stein — who says he charges a small fortune every month on his credit cards — is the ideal customer, in reality, he is what some in the industry call a “deadbeat.” That’s because he pays his balance in full every month.
The industry’s most profitable customers, the ones being sought by creative marketing tactics, are the “revolvers:” the estimated 115 million Americans who carry monthly credit card debt.
Ed Yingling, incoming president of the American Bankers Association, tells FRONTLINE that revolvers are “the sweet spot” of the banking industry. This “sweet spot” continues to grow as the average credit card debt among American households has more than doubled over the past decade. Today, the average family owes roughly $8,000 on their credit cards. This debt has helped generate record profits for the credit card industry — last year, more than $30 billion before taxes.
Some experts say the profitability of credit cards really began twenty-five years ago, when the banking industry successfully eliminated a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower. Deregulation, coupled with a revolution in technology that enables the almost real-time tracking of personal financial information and the emergence of nationwide banking, has facilitated the widening availability of credit cards across the economic spectrum. But for some, the cost of credit is often far greater than it appears.
According to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the credit card companies are misleading consumers and making up their own rules. “These guys have figured out the best way to compete is to put a smiley face in your commercials, a low introductory rate, and hire a team of MBAs to lay traps in the fine print,” Warren tells FRONTLINE.
Warren and other critics say that a growing share of the industry’s revenues come from what they call deceptive tactics, such as “default” terms spelled out in the fine print of cardholder agreements — the terms and conditions of which can be changed at any time for any reason with 15 days’ notice.
Penalty fees and rates are sometimes triggered by just a single lapse — a payment that arrives a couple of days or even hours late, a charge that exceeds the credit line by a few dollars, or a loan from another creditor which renders the cardholder “overextended” as defined by the nation’s three all-powerful credit bureaus. This flurry of unexpected fees and rate hikes come just when consumers can least afford them.
“[Banks are] raising interest rates, adding new fees, making the due date for your payment a holiday or a Sunday on the hopes that maybe you’ll trip up and get a payment in late,” says Robert McKinley, founder and chairman of Cardweb.com and Ram Research, a payment card research firm. “It’s become a very anti-consumer marketplace.”
Banking Association spokesman Yingling defends industry practices. Because the credit card business is basically unsecured lending, he says, the risks associated with the business must be offset.
But that’s of little consolation to consumers who may be in trouble. According to the Better Business Bureau, credit card and banking companies are the subject of a record numbers of complaints. “It’s not an accident that the banking and credit card business generates more complaints nationally, across the country, than any other industry…Out of one thousand industries that we track, they are number one,” says Pat Wallace, head of the San Francisco Bay Area Better Business Bureau. “There are irritated, unhappy, dissatisfied customers in this industry.”
As Professor Warren sees it, the industry is operating without fear of penalty. “There’s no regulator, and there’s no customer who can bring this industry to heel,” Warren says.
Duration : 0:56:9
Bad credit mortgage lenders Atlanta GA, Debt settlement agency Florida, Debt negotiation
http://www.getcredithealthy.com As seen on NBC/FOX News – consumer help and BBB Accredited. Get Credit Healthy uses the best practices in lending! Their process is designed with a 7-Step program to get your Credit healthy again. This program includes one-on-one mentoring by one of our FCRA and FICO certified Credit Wellness Advisors. This mentoring includes a personalized and inclusive credit analysis as well as personal guidance and education. Debt settlement agency Atlanta GA Credit repair after bankruptcy DC Bad credit car dealerships bay area Bad credit mortgage lenders Texas Debt Settlement help east bay Debt negotiation services Florida then you need to visit www.getcredithealthy.com today.
Duration : 0:2:34
How to check a lender or debt adviser has the correct licence
Under the Consumer Credit Act, all suppliers of credit related products and services need to hold a current Consumer Credit Licence. The Office of Fair Trading keeps a Public Register of these. Consumer co-operative, Zero-credit, demonstrates how to check the Register, using a simple postcode and gives tips on what to look out for, as well as time-saving tricks for different browsers. No borrower need ever feel helpless!
Duration : 0:6:27
Dealing with Debt Collectors? Know Your Rights
Credit.com’s Gerri Detweiler shares tips on what you should and shouldn’t say when a debt collector calls. Should you negotiate the debt? Should you provide your checking account or debit card information to a debt collector? Can a debt collector threaten to take you to jail? What if the debt is a ‘zombie’ debt, are you still legally liable? Is the debt collector breaking the law? How do you report a debt collector that has broken the law under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act? Gerri answers these questions and more on ABC. For more information on this topic, check out http://www.credit.com/blog/2010/11/infographic-what-to-do-if-a-debt-collector-calls/ &
http://www.credit.com/blog/2011/04/eleven-ways-a-debt-collector-may-be-breaking-the-law/ at Credit.com.
Duration : 0:6:41
Bad credit mortgage lenders Florida, Debt settlement agency Atlanta GA
http://www.getcredithealthy.com As seen on NBC/FOX News – consumer help and BBB Accredited. Get Credit Healthy uses the best practices in lending! Their process is designed with a 7-Step program to get your Credit healthy again. This program includes one-on-one mentoring by one of our FCRA and FICO certified Credit Wellness Advisors. This mentoring includes a personalized and inclusive credit analysis (Credit Health Report,) as well as personal guidance and education for obtaining true and sustainable credit health for life.
If you’re on the web searching for the following search terms…
Debt settlement agency Atlanta GA
Credit repair after bankruptcy DC
Bad credit car dealerships bay area
Bad credit mortgage lenders Texas
Debt Settlement help east bay
Debt negotiation services Florida
then you need to visit www.getcredithealthy.com today.
877 850 3444 ext 1
Duration : 0:2:33
Debt Fight Puts U.S. Credit Rating in Jeopardy
Lack of leadership in D.C. to blame for impasse over spending?
Duration : 0:8:47