Consumer spending modest during November
The nations economic recovery continues to move at a slow but steady rate, as according to the Commerce Department, consumer spending notched up slightly higher in November from October.
The report shows a 0.1 increase in consumer spending during the month – considerably less of a rise than economists polled by Reuters said there would be for November. After adjusting for inflation, spending hiked 0.2 percent on a monthly basis.
One economic analyst told the New York Times the report indicates mixed news regarding the state of the economy as 2011 comes to an end.
“It appears we have a little more consumer spending but less investment spending than we thought,” John Ryding, chief economist at the New York-based RDQ Economics, told the newspaper. “However, we expect those two developments to cancel each other out. At this point we still look for real G.D.P. Read more…
Seven Diseases Big Pharma Hopes You Get in 2012
It used to be joked that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is. These days, the opportunist is Big Pharma, which raises your insurance premiums and taxes while providing you low-priced drugs that you paid for.
How did Pharma get a good third of the United States taking antidepressants, statins, and Purple Pills, albeit at low prices? By selling the diseases of depression, high cholesterol, and gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD. Supply-driven marketing, also known as Have Drug — Need Disease and Patients, not only turns the nation into pill-popping hypochondriacs, it distracts from Pharmas drought of real drugs for real medical problems.
Of course, not all diseases are Wall Street pleasers. T
Watch Out for Advance Fee Loan Scams
Anything that seems to good to be true probably comes with some type of catch. That’s exactly how things work with an advance fee loan. If you’re looking for money to pay a offer or a loan to consolidate your debt, an advance fee loan will seem like a godsend. But, pay attention because these scams don’t always call themselves “advance fee loan.” You’ll have to learn the signs to avoid the trouble.
What is an Advance Fee Loan?
An advance fee loan is a type of loan that requires you to pay an advance fee or down payment on the loan before you actually receive the proceeds from the loan. They often guarantee approval regardless of credit history and sometimes even before you’ve made an application. What makes these loans a scam is that you typically never actually receive a loan. You pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars upfront and the loan never happens. The company d
Common Reasons New Credit Card Accounts Are Declined
Human Error
Though living participants have become increasingly superfluous to modern consumer transactions shoppers now able to shoot their magic numbers across the internet to furnish payment for most everything imaginable without a soul ever called upon to do anything more than arrange delivery upon authorization of purchase weve thankfully not yet reached a stage of technological development that would disallow the very chance for humankind to commit grievous accidents of notation. Now that computerized defenses have been erected to prevent data entry clerks from the most common blunders, borrowers must be primarily on watch to see that the final payment upon a credit card debt account had been recorded. (Once liability has been eliminated, some lenders seem to believe their responsibilities vanish as well)
Yes, even carefully planned and flawlessly accomplished debt relief tactics could actually end up doing harm to the credit reports of borrowers whod fought so hard to avoid bankruptcy only to give up the ghost on the precipice of meaningful change. The handful of newly emerging credit card debt relief programs yet to utilize a universally accepted terminology has unfortunately led each company to submit notes to the credit bureaus invoking terms whose language may differ only slightly from one lender to another but nevertheless substantially alter the eventual ratings. If a negotiated debt settlement isnt written down as a satisfactory compensation, for example, the computation of credit scores within the weighted FICO logarithms could drop by more than a hundred points.
Computer Error
Credit card debt existed well before the onset of computer systems as we know them today. Around the time Diners Club cards were sent to Wall Street up and comers, the US Armys electronic brains at the cutting edge of technology would barely have fit inside Club 21, even though the more progressive financial services industry valued the promise of computers and implemented the advancing services at a rate just below the military. Through the past three-quarter-centurys expansion of lending privileges to seemingly every American, the commercial banking industry has incorporated digitized records and instantaneous transfers, but the rapid fluctuation of complex business practices that soon encompassed an almost inconceivable stream of data (from credit card debt relief measures to mortgage forebearance) couldnt be accomplished without a few mistakes along the way.
For the most part, borrowers whose financial prospects have been significantly damaged by the lenders organizational slips must confront errors of inclusion. Consumers with the same name as one another are under constant threat of finding an unfamiliar credit card debt balance plunging down scores without notice. Whats worse, the erroneous placement means that the debt once recorded will never be reduced or touched in any way until such a time as the relevant state regulations no longer permit mention of unsecured obligations sufficiently dated. Although each credit bureau has supposedly set up a series of safeguards meant to prevent decent borrowers from being tarred by misdeeds meant to hinder same sounding names, aberrations still occur. In a way, ironically enough, the overblown fears of identity theft may themselves be to blame. As more and more consumers refuse to give out their social security numbers or insist upon separate documentation for the magic digits, some lenders inevitably fail to accurately record the data, and the credit bureaus mislabel the accounts as a result.
Payday loans creating Zombie debtors
High levels of interest on payday loans are helping to create ‘Zombie’ debtors – people who can only afford to pay the interest on their debts each month and not the debts themselves.
Based on a study of 2,000 adults, insolvency trade body R3 suggests that around 45 per cent of the population struggle to make their income last until payday and around 3.5 million adults are thinking about taking out a payday loan over the next six months.
Payday loans are short-term unsecured loans, averaging around £300 in value.
According to R3, sixty per cent those who take out a payday loan regret the decision and nearly half believe the loan made their financial situation worse.
The survey also found that young people were most likely to be attracted by a payday loan, with people between the ages of 16 and 24 using this form of credit.