The True Cost of Credit

Americans spend $50 Billion on Credit Card Processing Fees every year!

When you use your credit card…
How much does it cost the merchant to process the transaction?

Guest Post: 10% Savings Rate + Consumer Spending At 65% Of GDP = Retail Disaster | zero hedge

The country has been on a 30 year drunken binge of debauchery, debt accumulation and delusions of never ending 10% annual home price gains funding a glorious 30 years of retirement on an island in the Caribbean. These visions of a sugar plumb life of leisure are slowly giving way to the nightmare scenario of eating cat food in your very own cardboard box McMansion.

via Guest Post: 10% Savings Rate + Consumer Spending At 65% Of GDP = Retail Disaster | zero hedge

World According to Gold: Here Comes Tokyo Rose — Midas Letter

2. The first casualty of the collapse of the economic system will be civil order. Crimes against property will skyrocket roughly proportionate to the rate of currency devaluation as families find themselves cornered by lack of goods on the shelves in markets, and there is no choice but to steal from whomsoever is weaker.

via World According to Gold: Here Comes Tokyo Rose — Midas Letter

The Never Give A Sucker An Even Break Economy

Oh. My. God.

A Broke FDIC Expands Checking Account Insurance From $250,000 To Infinity

A few days ago, the FDIC, broke as ever, with a Deposit Insurance Fund that was well south of zero at last check, announced, with delightful irony, that it was expanding its insurance on non-interest bearing checking accounts from the current $250,000 to, well, infinity. As in there is no upper limit on how much the FDIC would insure – the fact that it has no money at the FDIC to begin with being completely irrelevant. That’s right, the broke FDIC basically said that it would guarantee up to $480 billion currently sitting in US checking accounts between December 31, 2010 and December 31, 2012.

Emphasis in the original.

I’m just … stunned.

More stunned than I was an hour ago seeing a new banner flying in front the local desperate Subway announcing three Five Dollar Footlongs now for just $13.50.

At least with Subway you’d be getting something for your money.

Go on, put that money in the bank. Then bend over for all those new fees you were never told about in advance!

Sneak Peek: Kobo Reader WiFi Lilac

Another tweet I had to screensnap:

Ashleigh works at Kobo, so she gets the cool toys ahead of us mortals.

See it after the break.

Sony Reader Hits New Low: US$75.00

Something is interfering with my usual way of embedding tweets, so I had to screensnap this one:

Click = big

Let me put my damn with faint praise recommendation this way: If you’ve wanted an eInk device just so you can read free public library ePub eBooks, go buy this.

Update: Photo proof! Thanks, Brandon!

Remember, this is the prior model, the PRS-300. Not the new PRS-350 that has a touchscreen and some CPU horsepower.

Investment Hierarchies

I’m trying to sort out The Money Endgame.

To do this, we need a comprehensive chart of the things money can run into for alleged safety.

What I’ve got here is just the barest skeleton, and I invite people to add to it in Comments and to pass this link around so experts can look at it and create their own comprehensive post that everyone can then refer to in order to suss out the endgame.

The Ordinary Investments:

01 – Savings
02 – Real estate
03 – Stocks
04 – 401K
05 – Mutual funds
06 – Corporate bonds
07 – Muncipal bonds
08 – Corporate junk bonds
09 – Options
10 – Commodities
11 – Silver
12 – Gold

The Weirder Stuff:

01 – Currency exchange
02 – Debt swaps
03 – Derivatives

Aside from the things “everyday” money can run into, we need a list of the things national funds can flee into. That’s the real Endgame Playbook. It’s not enough to see gold popping or food becoming more expensive. It’s the chess moves nations make that really tell the tale.

What We Are Waiting For As Of 9/30/10

Not in any order:

1) Blio Reader (supposed to be arriving 9/28)
2) Google Editions
3) Barnes & Noble PubIt

@mikecane just rec’d email from BN that PubIt! is open for business.Thu Sep 30 18:43:03 via Tweetie for MacJane L
jane_l

4) Kobo Reader WiFi
5) Something else I am NDAed about

Possible Myths:

1) Nook II
2) 7″ iPad
3) Palm Pre II
4) KindlePad
NEW 5) BlackBerry PlayBook (which might not exist!)

It needed updating in less than 24 hours — AGAIN! (And I hope he has another laugh.)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (Unless It Is) : All Tech Considered : NPR

People, not technologies, are enemies of the status quo. Though enabling those people to communicate more effectively is probably not going to win a lot of fans among repressive regime stakeholders.

via The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted (Unless It Is) : All Tech Considered : NPR.

Previously here:

Gladwell: Too Loosely Joined

From down the hill : Kindle 3 Keyboard Shortcuts et al

All these shortcuts and notes have been tested on my Kindle 3 3G + wi-fi. If you find these tips useful, feel free to copy & paste this post into your own blog/web site/forum – but please include a link back to here, as this is a work in progress.

via From down the hill : Kindle 3 Keyboard Shortcuts et al