Money

To: EDUCATION, LEGAL AFFAIRS AND NATIONAL EDITORS University of Houston Law Center Professor Jim Hawkins to release first empirical assessment of the CARD Act’s effectiveness for young consumersHOUSTON, April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new study by University of Houston Law Center Professor Jim Hawkins finds a credit card reform act has had little effect on aggressive marketing to    .. more …

“Care to sign up for a terrible interest rate and a lifetime of debt? We’ll give you a free T-shirt and this flimsy MasterCard coozie…”If you attended college between the late 1980s and the first part of the current century, you probably encountered a similar if less forthright pitch at some point from some guy at a table outside your ECON 101 class. And if you weren’t    .. more …

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire -03/16/12)- Credit card companies have posted impressive results of late. With the U.S. economy once again showing signs of growth, studies show that consumers are charging more on their credit cards over the last year. Five Star Equities examines the outlook for companies in the credit card industry and provides equity research on MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA – News ) and    .. more …

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire -03/16/12)- Credit card companies have posted impressive results of late. With the U.S. economy once again showing signs of growth, studies show that consumers are charging more on their credit cards over the last year. Five Star Equities examines the outlook for companies in the credit card industry and provides equity research on Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V – News ) and    .. more …

America’s Gasoline Problem, American Freedom Fuel Solution ATLANTA March 6, 2012; NACS OnLine reported that theconversation over high gas prices has evolved over the past few years, asthe retailers selling the fuel are less likely to be blamed forconsumers’ pain at the pump. And that’s to be expected, sinceOil Price Information Service (OPIS) numbers show that the national grossmargin on fuel is    .. more …

UK credit card companies wrote off 3.64bn in bad debts on their customers’ cards in 2011.The figures, from the Bank of England, were down from 5.32bn the year before and 4.12bn in 2009.However, that still meant that about 7% of all outstanding debt on people’s credit cards was written off as unrecoverable last year. Write-offs surged in the aftermath of the international banking crisis in 2008 and    .. more …

The regulatory filings by major credit card companies have disclosed mixed results in credit card defaults and delinquency rates for January 2012. According to these filings, three of the nation’s top six credit card companies reported lower rates of card default and delinquency. In comparison with the prior month, Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC – News ), American Express Company (NYSE:    .. more …

A pair of Republican members of Congress have introduced a bill to prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from implementing a new tax-reporting requirement for small businesses to reconcile their 1099-K reports from outside providers such as credit card companies with their own internal records.The bill, known as the 1099-K Overreach Prevention Act, was introduced last week by Congressmen Aaron    .. more …

(Photo Credit: Getty Images)If Newt Gingrich is elected president, he has said he would create a new guest worker program, reform the government’s current e-verify system and maybe even outsource immigration status checks to credit card companies.”We’d be far better off to outsource e-verify to American Express, MasterCard or Visa, because they actually know how to run a program like that without    .. more …

Don’t shed a tear for credit card companies. No matter what the headlines say about their parent entities, they’re mostly doing just fine…and eager to earn your business.If you’re one of those highly empathetic people who tend to cry at sad movies (and, if you are, you really need to stock up on handkerchiefs before you see War Horse) then you may have been shedding tears for some of your    .. more …