Post Tagged with: "credit cards"
Chart of the Day: Bank credit card fees induce big antitrust lawsuit
So why are these big name retailers suing the big banks. It’s this chart that appears to be the smoking gun. Credit card interchange fees are the highest by a large margin. Clearly those charges that go into the bank and credit card companies’ coffers are either absorbed by retailers or passed on to consumers
Who’s Fool?
Legislation to modify debit-card interchange fees cannot compete with celebrity gossip. It is not surprising that lobbying efforts have changed the minds of 19 senators who formerly aligned themselves with consumers and small banks (to which the lower fees do not apply.) The legislators have now hopped in bed with Too-Big-to-Fail Banks. That is politics as we know it
Why is US revolving credit decreasing?
This morning David Rosenberg noted: We also received the U.S. consumer credit data for April yesterday afternoon and the $1.0bln rise in total outstanding should be viewed in the context of the sharp revision in March (to now show a $5.0bln decline versus the initially reading of a $2.0bln increase). What really caught our eye
Links: 2010-02-26 – credit cards, reinflating the bubble and more
AIG posts $8.9 billion loss | Reuters CDS demonization watch, Greece edition | Felix Salmon Get a Credit Card Through Credit Unions and Small Banks to Save – Credit Cards – Lifehacker Welcome to the revolution Mr. Weidner – Abnormal Returns Reinflating the Bubble : Ryan Chittum – CJR Facebook Secures Patent for News Feed
Video: Jon Stewart on credit card reform
If you didn’t know, new credit card rules just came into effect. Jon Stewart has a pretty funny take on the industry. Make it rain, Bank of America, make it rain (credit card fees, that is)! Also see Learn How Canceling Credit Cards Affects Your Credit Score and Learn The Details of Your New Credit
Why the FDIC’s Resources are Strong and Insured Deposits are “Absolutely Safe”
Is this propaganda? I just received this e-mail from the FDIC’s consumer news with the title above. Personally, I never doubted that unbrokered deposits under $250,000 are safe at U.S. depositary institutions. But, the natural sceptic in me doesn’t like to see someone reaffirm what I thought I already knew. As bank failures are in
Consumer credit down, but does it show deleveraging?
I have just taken a look at the consumer credit figures for September, released just yesterday by the Federal Reserve. The data do show some modest deleveraging, especially when looking at the recent increase in nominal GDP. However, it is still not clear to me that the scale of deleveraging is great enough to induce
Why is everyone saying consumer credit is falling? It’s not.
But, everywhere I look, everybody is saying it is. I would like to be true to the data and not just take the government’s seasonally-adjusted numbers at face value. Judge for yourself. Here’s the data: This is what everyone is focused on – the seasonally-adjusted data. The part in red shows consumer credit down $12
Credit quality deteriorates in 2009
This is just in from the FDIC (emphasis added below). It should make clear that the banking system is still weak: Credit quality declined sharply for loan commitments of $20 million or more held by multiple federally supervised institutions, according to the 32nd annual review of Shared National Credits (SNC). The credit risk of these
Steve Keen: On the Edge with Max Keiser
Last week, I highlighted some of the ideas of Australian economist Steve Keen in my post, “Steve Keen and the spectre of terminal debt.” Keen is of the Minsky camp and he believes that an unsustainable debt bubble has build up in the industrialized world which can only be brought to heel through a ‘debt
Bank crisis for prostitutes
Credit is still tight despite the low Libor rates and other signs that market stress has died down. Case and point is an item I ran across on the Norwegian site E24. Apparently, Amsterdam is losing revenue as its prostitutes in the red light district cannot get credit. Here is my translation of the story:
What’s in your wallet? Probably higher interest rates.
FT Alphaville is reporting that the credit rating agency Fitch puts credit card losses at 10.4% of outstanding loans. This is a record. Bad news if you are a credit card company. So, what does one do in that situation? You raise rates on customers that are paying, silly. Citi’s rate increases emerged on the