Later [my husband & daughter] went hunting because Caroline desperately wanted to shoot a pig. P and Caroline didn’t see any pigs on Saturday night so they were as sad about their loss as I was about the Aggies loss. Fortunately, they went out Sunday morning and she made a perfect shot on a javelina, which is like a pig but uglier and with bad teeth.
Gordon Hageman couldn’t believe the credit card offer he got in the mail.
“My first thought, it was a mistake,” Hageman said.
The wine distributor called the number on the offer, gave them the offer code and verified his information. Sure enough, it was right: the pre-approved credit card came with a 79.9 percent APR.
Yes, 79.9 percent.
The offer is for a Premier card from First Premier Bank, which is based in South Dakota. On its Web site, First Premier says it is the country’s 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards. The site also says it “focuses on individuals who have less than perfect credit but are actually still creditworthy.”
“I think they’re trying to take advantage of me,” said Hageman.
Ya think?
Hageman acknowledged that his credit isn’t perfect, but he said it’s about average. He said the pre-approved offer didn’t mention the actual interest rate on the card — for that, he had to read the enclosed fine-print disclosure.
“I think you’re beginning to border on deception there,” San Diego State marketing professor Michael Belch said.
Belch said the card is offering a bad deal to people who are desperate.
“They’re just finding different ways to gouge the consumer,” Belch said.
The California Attorney General’s office said there’s nothing it can do about the cards since they are issued out of state and out of its jurisdiction.
A spokesman with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said interest rate limits on bank cards are set by the individual state and not on a federal level. According to information on the South Dakota Legislative Web site, there is “no maximum or usury restriction.” In other words, the individual bank can set its own interest rate limits.
Several calls made to First Premier for a comment were not returned.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/around-town/shopping/No-Youre-Reading-That-Right-64173667.html
Pilot and aircraft commander, 28 year old 1st. Lt. Edward Markewitz was the “old man” of the outfit and was worshipped by the rest of the crew. He was typical of the citizen soldier who answered his country’s call in her hour of need.
A first generation American, he represented the diversity of America’s ethnic background. Markewitz was born in Norwood, Massachusetts on May 24, 1917. His father and mother, Fabian and Albina Yuskas Markewitz were Lithuanian immigrants who came to America at the turn of the century.
A Tribute to 1st. Lt. Edward Markewitz and the crew of “Shady Sadie” B-24H 42-95059, 8th AF, 446 BG, 705 BS. http://www.paulmartinart.com/silverwings.html
Posted in Lithuanian, Men
Tagged Albina Yuskas Markewitz, Edward Markewitz, Fabian Markewitz, Shady Sadie
Posted in Christianity, Current Events, Family, Firearms, News, Personal Freedom, Politics, Surivial, Taxes, Tyranny
Tagged assault weapons ban, Banning ammunition, Banning magazines, Bethel College, Big Government, Constitution, Democrats, Freedom, Global Warming, Gun Control, High Taxes, Lord Christopher Monckton, Mexico, Obama, One World Government, Second Amendment, socialism, Taxes, Totalitarian Government, Washington, White House
If you’re looking for work, don’t look in California.
Employers in California are expected to keep cutting staff in 2010 as the wider U.S. jobs market recovers. As industries in other U.S. states prepare to rehire on signs of recovery, firms in California are still waiting for their economy to rebound.
California has lost 732,700 jobs over the last year. The state has 12.2 percent unemployment. In the 12 months through August, California’s construction industry shed 142,000 jobs, or 18.5 percent of its work force. Those workers are struggling to find new jobs in construction or other trades, according to analysts.
House prices soared higher in California than in most other U.S. states earlier this decade and have crashed harder amid the credit crunch. Developers are trying to unload unsold new homes and real estate agents are relying on selling foreclosures for a large share of business.
Tight credit and steep job losses have slimmed ranks of prospective home buyers, with many waiting for prices to drop further. At the same time, a number of other states are beginning to see home prices stabilize.
Tumbling personal, corporate and property tax revenues have put the brakes on government hiring as manufacturers wait for consumer spending to pick up before adding jobs.
Analysts expect California‘s jobless rate to climb well into next year.
“[Manufacturers] are trying to survive with as few workers as possible,” Raymond Sfeir said. “They’re not going to commit until they’re more certain.”
Small- to medium-sized companies need more than economic cues to boost payrolls, Jack Kyser said: “They’re having trouble accessing bank lending and are concerned about health-care reform and about environmental regulations out of Sacramento.”
Posted in Business, Current Events, Investing, News
Tagged but long-term greedy, Goldman Sachs, Greedy, Gus Levy
After 7 million job losses and approaching 2 million home foreclosures in the US alone, with businesses and consumers around the world still struggling to get finance after the long credit crunch, a little piece of Wall Street is finally on trial.
In the first major case against bankers at the heart of the financial meltdown, a jury of 12 mainly working-class New Yorkers will decide the fate of the two Bear Stearns managers whose hedge funds imploded in 2007, signaling the start of the crisis. Ralph Cioffi, 53, and Matt Tannin, 48, pocketed millions of dollars in pay during the boom years, but the events of 2007 left their investors nursing losses of $1.6bn and ruined forever the reputation of Bear Stearns, one of the oldest investment banks on Wall Street.
US attorney Patrick Sinclair recounted what he said was a litany of lies Cioffi & Tannin told to investors. The two men were desperate to stop investors deserting their funds when the sub-prime mortgage market began to plunge, Mr Sinclair said. Mr Cioffi alone was paid $32m in the two years before the funds collapsed.
They “violated a special relationship of trust” between fund managers and investors, he added. “They lied to investors to save their multimillion dollar bonuses. In the US, that is a crime, a serious crime. It’s called securities fraud.”
First, Mr Tannin said he was putting more of his own money into the funds, when in fact he did not invest a single cent of the $1m that was available in his bank account. Mr Cioffi, meanwhile, secretly withdrew $2m of his money. Second, Mr Cioffi denied any major investor was planning to pull out, when he had already received a major redemption request.
Mr Cioffi and Mr Tannin were curators of two hedge funds that invested in debt which is now known to have been toxic but which had seemed to promise great riches. They worked at the long end of the chain that stretched from overheated housing markets in the south and west of the US, where millions of buyers were tempted into taking on mortgages they could not afford. Those mortgages were sliced and diced by Wall Street and turned into securities which could be bought and sold as if they were shares. Credit rating agencies had certified the Bear Stearns funds’ mortgage derivative portfolio as super-safe; the defendants’ superiors at Bear Stearns and the funds’ outside investors believed they were taking little risk.
The question is when did the two managers realized this? The pair are charged with behaving dishonestly when the crisis began to break.
Posted in Business, Current Events, Investing, News
Tagged Bear Stearns, Matt Tannin, Patrick Sinclair, Ralph Cioffi, Wall Street
Posted in Current Events, News, Personal Freedom, Politics, Surivial, Taxes, Tyranny
Tagged 1040, Big Government, Constitution, Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Truth About Taxation in America, David, DOJ, earnings, Freedom, High Taxes, Income Tax, indentured servitude, Internal Revenue Code, IRS, Michigan, Peter Hendrickson, socialism, sworn testimony, Taxes, Totalitarian Government, US Government, W-4, wages, Washington
