Filed under: Banks, Home, Real Estate, Recession, Refinancing
The Obama administration is reportedly considering a plan that would prohibit lending institutions from foreclosing on a home before a mortgage loan modification is given consideration. This is the sort of thing that may sound good on paper (especially after “draft proposals” were obviously leaked to news media) but, upon closer inspection, I’m afraid, smells of nothing more than spin.
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Filed under: Insurance, Health, Insurance – Health Insurance
After a very public display of partisanship at President Barack Obama’s health care summit on Thursday, the public clearly saw that no real attempt at bipartisanship is possible on the health bill. If the Democrats want to pass health care legislation this year they most likely will need to use what’s commonly called the “nuclear option,” but officially called, in Senate terms, “reconciliation” to solve differences between bills passed by the Senate and House. Generally these bills cannot include provisions that are “extraneous” to taxing and spending.
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Filed under: Banks
Were you worried about what happened to all of the banking executives who lost their jobs when the economy first started to tank?
What banking executives? Well, you know, people who used to work at Lehman Brothers, which collapsed Sept. 15, 2008, and kind of got this whole recession started (though officially it began almost a year earlier). And then there were all those Merill Lynch executives who were canned when the company was being swallowed up by Bank of America. And Bear Sterns, a stalwart on Wall Street since 1923, was absorbed by another bank. So, yeah, them. Were you worried, fretting if they were able to land on their feet? (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Debt, Credit Cards
Now they like you.
For the longest time, it was common knowledge that credit card companies adored customers who were actually terrible with their money. You know, the person who often paid late and kept a high balance but continued using their card anyway. A customer like, well, what I used to be, when I was mired beneath a mountain of debt.
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Filed under: Banks
Banks are still unhealthy. If anyone doubted that, it was made official when The New York Times and other news outlets began reporting early this week that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation had announced that 450 banks had been added to the list of troubled financial institutions.
Just why is this important?
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Filed under: Banks, Technology
When it comes to personal finances, there are plenty of times when users “can’t get no satisfaction.” Especially when they are dealing with banks that have little concern for them being able to connect their bank accounts to personal finance tools like Mint.com. But, thanks to a new partnership with Get Satisfaction, Mint users will soon be able to get their questions answered by community members and Mint employees without leaving the Mint tool.
Get Satisfaction is a customer service tool that has been adopted by many companies and allows them to better serve customers and answer questions without complex Frequently Asked Question Pages and byzantine contact forms that have more drop-down choices than a FAFSA form.
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Filed under: Debt, Student Loans
Long-time Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh recently announced his plans to retire — but those plans won’t interfere with his desire to stand in the way of student loan reform, lower costs for students, and greater availability of grant aid for low-income students.
The problem? Sallie Mae employs a lot of people in Indiana, and Bayh wants to protect those jobs. In a letter to his Senate colleagues, Bayh wrote that he has “concerns about the short-term impact reform efforts could have on employment in Indiana.” He said he would “not support” any bill that does not “strike the right balance.”
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Filed under: Banks, Saving Money
Earlier today, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) released the results of two new consumer surveys — both of which you may be interested in.
(But if you aren’t interested, here’s a video you can click on, featuring a cat playing the piano. I aim to please.)
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Filed under: Debt, Recession
At the precise moment that President Obama was proclaiming how well his stimulus package worked, a news story crossed my computer screen saying that 10% of Los Angeles County’s 50,000 homeless are now sleeping in their cars each night. Multiply that number of car-dwellers to include the whole nation, and that’s a lot of people who will no doubt sleep — albeit behind the wheel — more soundly tonight knowing just how much better off they are than our President thinks they would have been.
Let’s get serious, folks.
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Filed under: Banks, Technology
Looking around for a new bank? You wouldn’t be alone. These days, it seems that a considerable amount of people are mulling the idea of bolting their financial institution and finding a new one, though, according to several experts I spoke with, there’s currently more mulling than moving going on.
If you’re one of the few who might actually be serious about switching banks, you might want to check out MyBankTracker.com, which hopes to be for banks what Google is for search engines. The site offers consumers easy access to information about banks and other financial institutions in order to help make smart banking decisions. (Continue the story…)
