CreditSlips

Cash: Killing It, or Building Bridges to It?

04/04/12

Much has been written about the inherent riskiness of cash. It is dangerous because it can be lost, stolen, eaten, destroyed, etc. It is dangerous because it is difficult to track, thereby helping to facilitate crime. Many a potboiler plot hinges on a cache of unmarked bills. Anyone remember Trixie Belden? “‘That governess of yours won’t argue when I tell her to leave a fat roll of unmarked bills under a stone at the Autoville entrance tonight.

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Deepthroat: Debt Collector Edition

04/03/12

The American Banker has been running an important series on credit card debt collection (here, here, and here) that

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One Answer to Why People Hate Banks

04/03/12

My last post mentioned a column by Joe Nocera on debt collection practices. Nocera's column is entitled "Why People Hate the Banks," and it appears on the penultimate page of the national print edition of today's New York Times.

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American Banker on Credit Card Debt Collections

04/03/12

Jeff Horwitz at the American Banker has been doing some great reporting on abusive debt collection practices in the credit card industry. Joe Nocera's column took up the subject today. Robo-signing and other abuses have been a problem for a while with credit card debt collections, and Horwitz and Nocera do a public service by drawing attention to the problems.

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Toward Cashlessness?

04/02/12

One of my students came across a humorous blog post from February, 2012. Titled, “What your payment method reveals about you,” the author listed a series of unlikely payment actions and a line on the presumed personal characteristics of the payer. The humor appeals to… well, us, anyway, and probably you, too.

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Fannie and Freddie Charitable Donations?

03/30/12

I'm generally skeptical about corporate charitable donations.  My sense is that they are primarily a transfer of value from shareholders to managers, rather than a value-enhancing investment in goodwill.  So on the DC Metro, what did I see today, but a poster advertising the 2012 DC Servathon that featured the logos of a variety of corporate sponsors, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

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Welcome to Guestbloggers Bill Maurer and Stephen Rea

03/30/12

Credit Slips welcomes Bill Maurer as a guest blogger this week. Bill is NOT a lawyer! Isn't that great? (We all need an occasional break from lawyers, even those of us who are lawyers.)

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Tax Rebates Lead to Bankruptcy Filings

03/29/12

Jialin Wing has a blog post up summarizing her and her co-authors very interesting NBER paper estimating that at least 30,000 to 60,000 liquidity constrained households this will be priced out of bankruptcy because of the increased costs that came with the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy law.

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Is Loaning Money at a 350% APR Evil?

03/29/12

In the early part of this year, a new start-up called ZestCash launched.

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New Panel Data!

03/28/12

The Fed has just released their data from the 2007-2009 panel Survey of Consumer Finances.  The SCF, conducted every three years, includes hundreds of variables on the assets, liabilities, income, and financial product shopping and utilization of American consumers.  Some questions include "what was the most important factor in your decision to refinance your mortgage?" and "during the past year, have you taken out a payday loan?".  The 2007-2009 panel dat

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