TradeBlog (TM) .net / Personal Finance Blog

Maybe It’s Time to Change Credit Cards

On Thursday, the first of a set of new rules went into effect resulting from the landmark credit card legislation earlier this year.

Banks must now provide written notice to customers 45 days before increasing the interest rate or changing the terms on a card. So banks raced to get out in front of that requirement, making a bunch of changes before Thursday, lest they have to give you a month and a half of warning.

Irritated by the changes? Inclined to take your business elsewhere now? This is exactly the right instinct, since plenty of people can still get a better deal from a different card. Fee-free balance transfers still exist. And banks have barely touched the most lucrative rewards programs — and wouldn’t dare fiddle too much given the revenue they generate.

The best revenge is a better card. Here’s how to find one.

» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Dow Soars Over 100 Points After July Home Sales Numbers

Existing-home sales surged 7.2 percent to a 5.24 million annual pace, the highest jump since August 2007. Economists had expected a rise of just 2.2 percent. Home sales were up 5 percent year over year. It was the fourth straight month sales have risen.

» CNBC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Toxic Loans Topping 5% May Push 150 Banks to Point of No Return

More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival.

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment decreased to 63.2 from 66 in July.

The measure reached a three-decade low of 55.3 in November.

Geithner: "We Won't Let" Wall Street Return To Old Habits

"I don't think the financial system is reverting to past practice, and we won't let that happen," Mr. Geithner said. "The big banks are running with much less leverage now, much more conservative liquidity cushions, there's been a significant shrinking of their balance sheets, getting rid of bad assets and cleaning up. And the weakest parts of the system don't exist anymore."

» WSJ [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

RBS - Fresh alert on global stock markets

RBS uber-bear issues fresh alert on global stock markets. Three-month slide could hit record lows, Royal Bank of Scotland chief credit strategist Bob Janjuah predicts.

Britain's Uber-bear is growling again. After predicting a torrid "relief rally" over the early summer, Bob Janjuah at Royal Bank of Scotland is advising clients to take profits in global equity and commodity markets and prepare for another storm as winter nears. "We are now in the middle of a parabolic spike up," he said in his latest confidential note to clients.

» telegraph.co.uk [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Names Of Americans Using Swiss Bank Accounts To Evade Taxes To Be Released

The Swiss and U.S. governments announced a deal Wednesday to settle American demands for the identities of suspected tax dodgers, despite Switzerland's vaunted bank secrecy. But they kept all details under wraps, including how many of the 52,000 names sought by the IRS from banking giant UBS AG will be revealed.

» Huffington Post [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Read it quick: this article will self-destruct in eight hours.

Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.

Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.

For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.

» Vanish / Washington edu [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

U.S. Enters Recovery as Stimulus Refutes Skeptics

Recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s has begun as President Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus -- derided as insufficient and budget-busting months ago -- takes effect, a survey of economists indicated.

The economy will expand 2 percent or more in four straight quarters through June, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median of 53 forecasts in the monthly Bloomberg News survey. Analysts lifted their estimate for the third quarter by 1.2 percentage points compared with July, the biggest such boost in surveys dating from May 2003.

» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Durable Goods Orders Fell 2.5% In June...

...much larger than the 0.6% slip economists expected.

» Trade Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]