Thursday, March 8, 2007

More Good Economic News

FOR SOME AMERICANS THE ECONOMY IS GREAT

CNBC this morning reported on retail sales for Feb. this morning, Sacks, Nordstroms, the high end retailers in general, had a pretty good month, but not so much for the rest of the pack, in general. As I noted earlier, labor costs, i.e. wages and benefits, were up last quarter, in large part to big bonuses paid to high-income workers.

So you see, the economy is doing great! It's like the ad I heard on KLSD Air America one morning, some financial planner who wants to give back to his community for all of his business successes as a way to say thanks, and to help people out.

How nice, I thought, how progressive even. Then I heard the pitch. It was for a seminar to help the successful wealthy investors make the most out of their high end investments! Way to give back to the community, dude. [Shakes head in wonder and amazement]

In a related area, I also heard the spokesman for the American Bankers Association talking about credit cards, I guess Congress held some hearings on credit card debt yesterday, and he said that a lot of the problem is an educational one, that people need to be better educated about credit and how it works.

True enough I said, but, when you watch the way the credit card companies sell their product, and isn't that what advertising is all about, educating the consumers about your product? But, alas, when you watch the ads, they're selling vacations and golf outings and impressing the boss and buy buy buying more crap for your house. I'm pretty sure that educating the consumer about responsible credit, the impact of just making the minimum payment on your credit card accounts, and a whole plethora of things related to credit and credit cards, is AWOL from their campaigns.

But their spokesmodel said the problem is the consumer being un-educated. No mention of their culpability in it, no sirree bob, it's you, you dear readers, at fault.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

THIS IS WHAT THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY DID TO ME AND MY BUSINESS.

We are the owners of A&B Enterprises dba Fantasyline. We had been in business for 23 years. Our business was adult talk lines. We have always used live operators to screen our callers and verify bank information. We had excellent fraud control and verification procedures. Our primary form of payment was VISA and MasterCard. We had various merchant accounts. Initially we had merchant accounts with banks. At some point these banks discontinued telephone order processing and or credit card processing so we switched to third party processors etc. Our merchant accounts never had a bad mark against them. They were never cancelled due to chargebacks.

Our last processor was Online Data in Westchester IL. In December 2004 they informed us that they had to switch our account. In April 2005 they stated they could not switch our account because we sold downloadable DVD’s. This was false. We enclosed a letter to that effect to Online Data. The letter did no good and Online Data informed us that due to the nature of our business they could no longer process our charges.

Online Data recommended we contact Nelix to find a merchant account. Nelix refereed us to ECS World UK. This arrangement did not work out as ECS World UK failed to pay us monies owed.

Due to the loss of our merchant account we had to close our business. Online Data claimed that they were being forced to close all Adult Oriented Web Businesses by Visa and Mastercard International and Chase JP Morgan Bank. Fantasyline never was a Web Business. Closing our business abruptly caused us severe hardship.

All deprived us of our livelihood. Aside from depriving us of our livelihood and the complications that caused, we always paid high merchant fees.

Marcia Siegel
marciasiegel2004@yahoo.com

Duckman GR said...

That's what happens when business gets wedded to politicians, people get screwed.

And don't forget Marcia, it's your fault because you aren't educated enough about credit.

Well, that, and the fact that the so called "free market" is a fraud and a myth as palliative to soothe our concerns. They always tout the power of the free market and competition, but all I see around us, every day, at the gas stations, on the grocery shelves, on the teevee, in the job market and the stock market, is a shrinking market, fewer choices, less competition not more, consolidation, the good ol boys board of directors network, and common people left holding the bag.

Every time I go to the god damned grocery store, the big chain one, not the 3 smaller ones I frequent, I find some product I'd been buying regularly, gone, but replaced by more of the other products on the shelves, not something else. One day it was Knotts Light Jams, the next time it was the bread I liked, the next time something else.

So in response to that I shop elsewhere for products I like, and the chain sees that people aren't buying as much of something so the ycut that out, and then I have less of a reason to shop there again. And that's a free market? Free enterprise and competition?

Yeah, and Michael Jackson just naturally sounds like a 16 year old boy.

Anonymous said...

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