The packet touts the virtues of the FedEx Ground system and how that system allows nearly 13,000 people to be independent business owners working as contractors to FedEx.

What’s most interesting about this is not necessarily the packet, but how it came to me.

It was by way of the U.S. Postal Service’s Priority Mail.

One of those proposed efforts that seemed to fade from the spotlight as quickly as it was mentioned was creating a system that would allow banks to get bad assets — primarily subprime mortgages — off their books.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said today that it has a winner of its pilot offering in the Legacy Loans Program.

Residential Credit Solutions bid more than $64 million in cash for a 50 percent stake in a limited liability company organized by the FDIC to hold a portfolio of mortgages with $1.3 billion in unpaid principal.

The FDIC said it “received various bids that were very competitive.”

The rub to all of this is the portfolio was from Franklin Bank in Houston, which regulators closed in November.

As this program moves forward, it hopefully will be used to buy bad assets from banks that are still in business, thus preventing them from failing.

Of $5 million in loans this director took out from the bank, $3.2 million of the loans turned sour.

And the bank’s failure cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s deposit insurance fund $131 million.

I’m not implying that this director’s action caused the bank to fail. But there clearly was little oversight by the board.

Egan, who also blogs about e-mail and the workplace, says when office workers need a break but the mercury reading makes it too uncomfortable to do so, they can:

– Shift gears by working on a new task or reading a magazine

– Find new places inside the office building to take a break

– Exercise by walking the halls or stairs, or lifting weights at your desk

We like the first two options best, by the way.

That’s according to a Forbes story, and based off of research by Foresight Analytics.

The story says that Wells, which has 7.7 percent of the country’s market share in SBA loans, moved up to the top spot because of CIT Group’s struggles with heavy debt.

Use of debit cards has surpassed credit cards, accounting for slightly more than 50 percent of non-cash transactions.

That’s according to research from the TowerGroup.

But is this a trend or just a flash in the pan? Are people just temporarily suspending their debt-quenching tendencies, or have they learned their lessons from taking on too much debt?

Time will tell.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s survey of national bank examiners shows that 37 percent of banks examined were increasing their loan production. Thirty-one percent had little change in loan production, the survey said.

The survey also showed that underwriting standards by banks have tightened.

Regulators also closed Millennium State Bank of Texas in Dallas on Thursday.

That brings the total number of bank failures this year to 52.

A big part of the story is about dealers who are playing up Roger Penske’s plan to buy the brand, and General Motors gentle admonition to them not to so as to not take “the spotlight off the brand itself,” the article says.

You can read more about Davies and the story here.

On that day, state and federal regulators closed five banks: two in California, two in Georgia and one in Minnesota.

Up until then, the most banks regulators had closed on any one Friday was four, on April 24.

To date, 45 banks have failed in 2009. That includes First National Bank of Anthony, which was closed by the Comptroller of the Currency June 19. Its deposits and branches were assumed by SNB Bank of Kansas.

Since the banking crisis began in 2008, 70 banks have failed.