Job-hunters are increasingly being asked to agree to allow potential employers to view their personal credit information, a development that Sen. Elizabeth Warren says is unfairly keeping people out of the job market who've had financial setbacks or have reports that contain inaccurate information.
Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour.
Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said Tuesday in an interview. [...]
Demos applauds the work of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who today introduced The Equal Employment for All Act, legislation that would prohibit the widespread use of pe
President Obama has proclaimed that thanks to the Volcker Rule "never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is `Too Big to Fail', " the reality is a bit more complicated.
Though the rule issued today by financial regulators seeks to ban proprietary trading -- essentially gambling with federally insured deposits -- some experts argue that banks will find ways to get around the restrictions to continue engaging in risky behavior. [...]
The much-anticipated final regulations implementing the Volcker Rule will be released today and, almost miraculously, it seems to be significantly stronger than the proposed text publicized more than a year ago. We will all have to await the actual wording since this is an area in which the devil is truly in the details.
But the all-important limitation on insured banks betting on the trading markets with depositors’ money is rumored to do a few key things:
Don't use that post-surgery fog as an excuse to ignore medical bills, even if you're still contesting them with your doctor or health insurer. Otherwise, your credit score will need to heal, too.
Medical debt is the most common type of collection account, representing nearly half of all reported collections. Almost one in six credit reports contain a medical debt collection, according to the Federal Reserve. And about two in five Americans reported a lower credit rating last year due to unpaid medical bills. [...]
Credit cards can be a useful stop-gap until payday, but when paychecks aren’t enough to cover the basics and balances roll over, credit cards become an expensive way to make ends meet. Past research from Demos shows that 40 percent of indebted low- and middle-income households have used their credit cards as a plastic safety net when incomes, assets, and shrinking public programs did not afford enough to meet basic needs.
The bill for decades of Detroit's financial decline has now come due.
A federal judge's ruling approving the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history Tuesday sets the stage for an epic legal battle over who will be asked to help pick up the tab, including bond investors, retired city workers, city vendors, state taxpayers, or Wall Street bankers.
In fact, the Volcker rule is already federal law, passed as part of the massive financial sector overall bill known as the Dodd-Frank Act, signed in 2010. But since that time, five separate regulatory agencies, including those that focus on the markets and others on the banks, have been working to come up with a rule that will satisfy all parties.
Here we go again: Home equity lines of credit are on the rise -- with a 16 percent increase forecast this year -- as more homeowners borrow against the value of their homes. The reflexive question might be: Didn't Americans learn anything from the housing bust?
To the Republican supporters of laws that would treat the poll booth like an exclusive nightclub that asks for photo ID and other qualifications before allowing entry, the answer to why anyone would oppose this is simple: They must not want to vote bad enough.
One of the most simplistic fictions is that corporate elites are spearheading a "class war" all on their own, driving down wages to squeeze out higher profits in the name of greed.
Of course, that's not actually the way modern shareholder capitalism works. Instead, most CEOs and executives -- and the boards who hire and fire them -- wake up every day worrying about how they are going to please you and me. (Assuming you, like me, have money invested in stocks through your 401k or whatnot.)
Older Americans are disproportionately likely to be in debt. A 2012 Demos survey found that citizens 65 and older typically carried $9,300 on their credit cards, the most of any age group. Debt burdens are increasing, too.
“We are on strike today to have respect and dignity at work,” says Walter Melendez, one of approximately 40 Los Angeles port truck drivers who walked off the job at 5a.m. morning in protest of alleged unfair labor practices. The strikes featured the rolling “ambulatory pickets” that the truckers have excelled at—chasing down trucks as they leave the port and setting up picket lines in front of them.
There are few better ways to uncover fraud in an industry than to incentivize insiders to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. And a little known part of Dodd-Frank did just that for the securities industry, creating a new whistleblower program run by the SEC that can bestow huge rewards on anyone who brings to light evidence of fraud that results in a settlement.
Credit card fees can be expensive and annoying, there’s no doubt about it. But many of them can be avoided if you’re careful and others may be worth paying if you get something worthwhile. For example, many of the best rewards credit cards charge annual fees, but people who use them frequently are able to earn additional rewards that outweigh the extra cost.