Early this morning in How The Citi-Grinch Stole Christmas (and Why It's a Good Thing) I wrote " If ever there were screams of "Please Regulate Me" these actions by First Premier and Citigroup must be at the top of the list . " Well, that was fast. Dodd introduces bill to freeze credit-card rates Although Dodd has talked about this before, I was amused to see Dodd introduces bill to freeze credit-card rates at 3:16 PM today. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd on Monday

HyperCube Files Complaints Against Level 3 in New York and Texas HyperCube Forced to Sue Level 3 Again For Its Illegal Refusal to Pay for HyperCube’s Services LANCASTER, Texas, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ — HyperCube LLC, a competitive local exchange carrier, today announced that it has filed complaints against Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ:LVLT) due to Level 3’s unlawful refusal to pay for tariffed access services performed by HyperCube in connection with Level 3’s provision of toll-free calls th

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to do consumer credit repair, there are five major C words to lenders. Those major areas are character, capacity, capital, collateral and conditions. Character Character refers to how well lenders can trust you. If they know you personally, that’s great. Oftentimes, this is determined by how well you’ve made payments on time. Reports of 30, 60 and 90 day delinquencies don’t look good on your credit as you can imagine. Every negative entry counts agai

Bill Hardekopf, CEO of Lowcards.com , emails us with his latest on news that Chris Dodd would propoze a rate freeze on credit cards. This comes after Citigroup and others went crazy hiking rates: Kardekopf: Today, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd introduced new legislation that would immediately freeze credit card rates on existing balances through February of 2010. Dodd felt this bill would prevent issuers from further interest rate hikes that have taken place since the Credit

We’re heading for the hills…really! Last week, stocks went up. Stocks went down. Not much was proved one way or another. The week ended in a draw, as near as we can tell. But we think we are making progress in understanding what is going on. The private sector is de-leveraging. Now, it’s the public sector doing the heavy lifting. It is leveraging everything it can. Leverage in the private sector led to the banking crisis/bear market of 2007-2009. Debt always leads to trouble. Next up: a cr

House foreclosures are something that has become a very large concern for many homeowners, especially in recent years. House foreclosures are becoming more and more common across the United States and many people are losing their homes everyday.Such home foreclosures have a many causes; however one of the most salient is that of a primary financial contributor losing his or her job unexpectedly. Such a situation can completely alter a household?s means to pay the mortgage on the home loan, furth

For students attending college or graduate school, paying student loans is a key concern. When considering how you are going to pay back your loans, you have many options available. If you are like most students, you have more than one loan. Student loan consolidation is a great way to simplify your repayment process. Loan consolidation is essentially the process of taking multiple loans from different providers and paying that loan with a single umbrella loan from a single provider. There a

I used to be a European High Yield guy. I was there when the market first took off in the late 1990s on the back of telecom plays like NTL or Telewest. I was also there when the Russian devaluation and default shut down the market. And I remember how the market tanked when the Tech Bubble burst and those 7 and 8 times EBITDA and 0.9x coverage ratios were not met, defaults skyrocketed, and investors lost their shirts. So I know what happens to markets when easy money comes to town and people ar

By Peter Robison, Pat Wechsler and Martin Z. Braun Bloomberg.com Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) — Salvatore Calvanese, the treasurer of Springfield, Massachusetts, for four years, had a ready defense for why he risked $14 million of taxpayer money on collateralized-debt obligations laden with subprime mortgages in 2007. He didn’t know what he was buying, he says, and trusted the financial professionals who sold them and told him they were safe. “I thought they were money markets that were jus

By Dawn McCarty Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Capmark Financial Group Inc., the lender owned by companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc . and KKR & Co ., filed for bankruptcy protection after posting a second-quarter loss of about $1.6 billion. The company listed consolidated debt of $21 billion and consolidated assets of $20.1 billion as of June 30, according to Chapter 11 doc

As a record number of people default on their mortgages and others find themselves unable to pay their credit card bills, more Americans are watching their credit scores take a big plunge. As credit scores drop, the number of scammers making credit repair promises is on the rise. They’ll take your money and leave you with little improvement, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The government laid out some of the most common credit repair scams. Here’s how to tell if a company is making pr

It’s a common problem among computer users: after a few months, our computers become weighed down by programs and all sorts of other junk, and inevitably become sluggish. For the less tech-savvy users, this may induce thoughts like “Why is my computer so terrible?” or “I guess I could always upgrade this… what-cha-ma-callit RAM thing”. Regular maintenance is usually required to keep a computer optimized and running at its best. Here are four programs that will make your computer faster, and fo