Here’s a little something from Bloomberg about the struggles of those poor, unfortunate credit card companies. Keep your tears to a minimum, please.
You know, the companies that got a blank check from the Bush Administration to jack up interest rates, unilaterally revise credit contracts, levy late fees if you breathe past the payment deadline, etc.
I know the bailout is jacked up. But from this seat, I’ll be noting – carefully – any congressman who supports a taxpayer handout to the companies who’ve been looting the middle class on the Bush watch.
Well, it finally happened. I got my first invitation to Plaxo. Somehow I thought Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter would be enough, but no. Gotta do another site. Another password. More “friends.”
Enough already! Surely I’m not alone in thinking this.
Stop the madness. I want to get off.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be informing you on Robert Layton’s approach to business development in Wichita – once he accepts the Wichita City Council’s offer to become city manager.
It’s an offer that’s being discussed in every Wichita boardroom today, and not without some tongue-in-cheek thought.
One person I talked to laughed about the clear, conflict-laden split on the council between Layton and Sedgwick County Manager Bill Buchanan.
“It’s kinda like the scene in ‘Pulp Fiction.’ Can’t you just imagine them calling in Harvey Keitel (cleanup expert Winston Wolf in the movie) to clean up the mess in the board room?”
Except for maybe some small children and Santa himself, I doubt there are many people who are as excited about the Christmas season as I am. I put up all my decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving and don’t take them down till New Year’s Day. I watch all the Christmas specials, and if I miss them, I rent them. I sing Christmas carols in the shower and have been known to lead group sing-a-longs at parties. In fact, I even still carol door-to-door!
However, even I don’t want to hear Christmas songs all day and all night this early in the season. But two Wichita stations are already at it. I don’t understand. Who wants this? What do the stations get out of it? Is it that much harder to run regular programming until at least after Thanksgiving? Sorry, but they’ve lost my business until then.
Headline on the latest press release from the National Association of Home Builders:
HOUSING AFFORDABILITY NATIONWIDE RISES TO HIGHEST LEVEL IN FOUR YEARS
It isn’t often I look at the comments below a story of mine on Kansas.com and say or think anything printable, but today’s an exception.
J.P. Weigand & Sons, the 800-pound gorilla of Wichita residential real estate, announced the formation of an REO today, a misplaced acronym that actually means “foreclosed properties division.” It should be a real “uh-oh” moment for anyone who follows the Wichita housing market.
Two key points emerge from the announcement: There’s already enough home foreclosure business to warrant the formation of a foreclosure division, Weigand officials said. And they’re preparing for more.
An alert and astute reader’s response: “This is sure a sign of the times.”
Does it worry you that Hank Paulson has completely changed how he’s spending the $700 bil. bailout? It was passed as a bad debt purchase program and is now a stock purchase program for banks, and for non-bank financial companies, and insurance companies, and maybe the auto industry, and who knows, the newspaper industry could sure use some, too.
Anyway, I heard a comment from a financial commentator that Paulson seems to be throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks. That struck home with me. It’s good to be open to the most effective solution, but doesn’t this feel like a recipe for waste and giving money to banks who don’t really need it. These really are extraordinary times: the stakes are immense and the government is really just making it up as it goes.
Despite the mystery meat for dinner, the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting and dinner Tuesday was a great evening.
The annual video provided a bit of Wichita history and one of the biggest laughs of the night when this question was posed: What’s the difference between California and yogurt? Yogurt has culture.
Doris Kearns Goodwin provided lots of history and laughs of her own. The most amazing thing to me, though, was how she spoke. I’m a fast talker myself, but seriously, I’m not sure Doris drew breath. She just talked on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on-and-on without pausing. Whew.
She still somehow managed to make her points and be entertaining along the way.
The first thing she uttered once the speech was over was a plea for water. By that point, after just watching her, I needed some, too.
The National Association of Realtors has devised this interesting tool to reveal median home prices in a given metropolitan statistical area.
It’s updated monthly, so check in regularly to measure Wichita’s progress in this measuring stick against our nearby competitors.
The price of a barrel of Black Gold has fallen near $57 as I write this, with some analysts forecasting a drop well into the $40s. That can’t be good news for ethanol plant developers.
How low do you think the price of crude will go? What’s driving the decline? Is it the economic crash? Have speculators turned elsewhere?
And perhaps more interestingly, what impact will any government strings – MPG requirements, et al. – on the auto industry bailout have on the price?
To be fair, physicians at the semi-annual American Medical Association took on some weightier issues, too. But among the actions they took Monday: Adopting a policy that says text messaging while driving is a public health risk.
They had to vote on that?
“Texting while driving takes the driver’s attention away from the road, which can lead to accidents,” physician Peter Carmel, a AMA board member, said in a news release. “A recent study found that text messaging while driving causes a 400 percent increase in time spent with eyes off the road. No one should have to worry that other drivers are focused on texting instead of traffic. This is about keeping people safe on our roads.”
Starbucks and their ilk always struck me as a little ridiculous, a small sign of America’s debt-fueled over-affluence, selling coffee 4 to 6 times more expensive than homebrew. Well, like so many other things, fancy coffee is cooling fast as people clutch their dollars close to their chests.
Today, Starbucks reported that sales per store are falling. Caribou Coffee and Tim Horton’s have done likewise. But those companies also report bagged coffee sales are still strong, meaning people are making it, but at home.