Capital One: Americans Use Rewards to Offset Travel Costs


According to a Capital One survey conducted in the first week of June, more Americans will use rewards accumulated on their credit cards to defray the cost of their summer vacations – 40% of rewards card holders, as opposed to 33% last year. The Capital One Rewards Barometer, a quarterly survey of adults who currently have a credit card with a rewards program, included over 1,000 participants. While more people are planning to travel, as opposed to having a “staycation,” nearly half of respondents said that high gas prices will factor into their plans. The high cost of fuel may hit in more ways than one: in addition to cutting back on driving, Americans may choose to fly less because of rising fuel surcharges.

Redemption patterns: hotels trump all

Among surveyed cardholders planning to use their rewards to supplement their vacation, the preferred redemption options were hotels (55%), airfare (48%) and gas (42%). “Planning a summer vacation can be stressful given today’s economic conditions. With soaring gas prices and increasing airline fares, consumers are seeking greater value from their credit card rewards to maximize their benefits,” said Troy Jamison, VP of Loyalty Services at Capital One.

However, many consumers were dissatisfied with their rewards program: although 43% of cardholders redeemed rewards in the past 3 months, only one in four was completely satisfied. 26% cited blackout dates on their airline credit cards as their main frustration, while 24% pointed to their inability to book a last-minute trip.

Optimizing rewards cards for summer travel

If the Capital One Barometer reveals anything, it’s that American rewards credit card holders like to have choices. Choosing the right rewards credit card and redeeming what you earn wisely can help you get the most out of your points in a way that’s best for you.

  • Loyalty vs. flexibility: If you know that you often stay at one hotel or fly on one airline, you’ll get higher rewards with a branded credit card. A more generic card will not give as high of a rate, but will have broader earning and redemption options. For example, the branded BP credit card earns 5% rewards only on BP gas, while a broader gas credit card may only give 3% at all gas stations.
  • Miles vs. credits: If your credit card pays out in airline miles, remember that you’re usually still on the hook for taxes and fees, which can run in the hundreds of dollars. If you can redeem for a travel credit, you can use your rewards to offset any travel-related expense, from a plane ticket to in-flight meals to hotel stays to gas.
  • Remember the fees: Frequent international travelers should look for a credit card that doesn’t have a foreign transaction fee, because the 3% charge adds up quickly. Also, some cards will give you credits against other expenses, like baggage fees or the government Global Entry program.

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Should You Consider an IVA or Bankruptcy? Which Is the Best Option for You?

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On the surface, declaring bankruptcy looks like an easier and better way to be free from debt. However, doing so can have major repercussions, affecting your assets, career and credit rating. A debt consolidation scheme - such as an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) - can act as an alternative to bankruptcy, but even so, is it really suitable for everyone?

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Points to Consider When Choosing a Credit or Debt Counseling Agency

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When searching for a credit counseling agency, it is essential to pick a company that truly works in your favour and is not after making its commissions from you. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), IRS and other non-profit consumer protection companies have compiled a list of tips that consumers can use to find good credit counseling firms that will represent your case.

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Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6376779

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Cato Is Shocked That The Three "De's" Produce A Criminogenic Environment


James Bovard of Cato wrote an article entitled “The Food-Stamp Crime Wave” on June 23, 2011 for the Wall Street Journal.

Bovard shows no awareness of criminology, but what he described was the creation of a criminogenic environment. A criminogenic environment has such perverse incentives that it produces widespread crime in a particular field of activity. Non-criminologists frequently have difficulty believing that fraud can become common.

They often believe that fraud can only arise among “a few rotten apples.” This view is naïve and crimionological research falsified the claim over a half century ago. Bovard is correct, therefore, that fraud can become common in an industry. This is particularly true if fraud produces a “Gresham's dynamic.” George Akerlof explained this point over 40 years ago in his famous article on a market for “lemons” (1970).

“[D]ishonest dealings tend to drive honest dealings out of the market. The cost of dishonesty, therefore, lies not only in the amount by which the purchaser is cheated; the cost also must include the loss incurred from driving legitimate business out of existence.”

Bovard purports to be a libertarian, yet he ascribes the creation of the criminogenic environment in food stamps to the three “de's” – deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization. He is also upset that the federal government, in the context of food stamps, has failed to sufficiently distort consumer decision making. I address his substantive position on food stamps in another column.

This column explains his argument as to how the three de's created a criminogenic environment in food stamps and shows how his reasoning would compel him to demand the end of the far more powerful and destructive criminogenic environments that drove the Great Recession (and the second phase of the S&L debacle and the Enron-era accounting control frauds).

The first element Bovard cites as producing a criminogenic environment is deregulation. “Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar "paperwork reduction" reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.”

The second element he cites is de facto decriminalization due to the Obama administration's near indifference to fraud.

“The Obama administration is far more enthusiastic about boosting food-stamp enrollment than about preventing fraud.”

Bovard argues that desupervision led to de facto decriminalization. “The USDA's Food and Nutrition Service now has only 40 inspectors to oversee almost 200,000 merchants that accept food stamps nationwide. The Government Accountability Office reported last summer that retailers who traffic illegally in food stamps by redeeming stamps for cash or alcohol or other prohibited items "are less likely to face criminal penalties or prosecution" than in earlier years.”

Bovard is implicitly raising the danger of a Gresham's dynamic among retailers. Large, fraudulent retailers can obtain vastly more from food stamp fraud than can recipients. An honest retailer cannot compete against a large, fraudulent retailer. This turns market forces perverse and can drive honest retailers out of business. Fraud begets fraud.

Bovard appears to recognize that vigilant regulation is essential to successful fraud prevention and prosecution. When the regulators do not make anti-fraud efforts a priority the prosecutors are so overwhelmed that the criminal justice system breaks down. He cites the example of Wisconsin.

“The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute concluded: "Prosecutors have simply stopped prosecuting the vast majority of [food-stamp] fraud cases in virtually all counties, including the one with the most recipients, Milwaukee."”

In criminology, we refer to this as a “system capacity” problem. Bovard argues that the desupervision has effectively destroyed the capacity of the system to respond to the “crime wave” produced by the criminogenic environment. Bovard concludes that the criminogenic environment was inevitable because cheaters can profit with greatly reduced risk of prosecution.

Environments become intensely criminogenic when the federal government engages in the three “de's” and preempts state anti-fraud efforts. This was an infamous feature of the Bush administration's response to the fraudulent mortgage lenders, and Bovard argues that the Obama administration is intensifying a criminogenic environment in food stamps by following similarly fraud-friendly policies.

“The Obama administration is responding by cracking down on state governments' antifraud measures. The administration is seeking to compel California, New York and Texas to cease requiring food-stamp applicants to provide finger images.”

So, how much does the food stamp fraud cost? Bovard does not provide the published estimates, but notes that 44 million Americans are recipients of food stamps at a total cost of $77 billion, or under $2000 per recipient. Individual frauds, therefore, obtain relatively small proceeds. Fraudulent retailers are the ones who are enriched by food stamp fraud. Bovard, however, concentrates entirely on fraudulent recipients and several corrupt public officials.

The GAO estimated, prior to the adoption of electronic benefit transfers (EBT) that food stamp trafficking represented 3.7% of annual benefits. Food stamps are now paid through EBT. This has greatly reduced the incidence of fraud by recipients, in some studies by an estimated 75-81 percent. Whitmore, Diane. “What are Food Stamps Worth?” (July 2002: p. 6 & n. 5).

Bovard missed the real food stamp crime wave (in terms of a much higher incidence of fraud) that peaked over a decade ago.

What we need now is to get Bovard and the Wall Street Journal to apply this same reasoning and passion about the dangers of the three “de's” producing intense criminogenic environments to the three “de's” that produced our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. My prior columns have explained at length how the three “de's” produced the criminogenic environment that drove the “epidemic” of accounting, securities, mortgage, and appraisal fraud that hyper-inflated the bubble and led to the Great Recession.

Bovard's column was the most e-mailed WSJ article for two days. Food stamp fraud is important and Bovard's rhetoric stirred the WSJ readership to rage. The accounting control frauds that drove the S&L, Enron era and ongoing crises are massively greater and more destructive and they involve our most elite CEOs becoming spectacularly wealthy at the expense of the public. The incidence of banking and mortgage fraud is far greater than food stamp fraud.

The direct dollar losses due to these frauds are massively greater than food stamp fraud. The moral culpability and the financial gain of the CEOs who led the accounting control frauds are incomparably greater than that of a typical fraudulent food stamp recipient. The typical fraud consists of a recipient who is actually eligible for food stamps because she is impoverished selling some of those stamps to obtain income to purchase non-food items.

Those non-food items can range from paying the rent and health care costs to illegal drugs. The systemic damage caused by the fraudulent CEOs – the Great Recession – has no counterpart in the food stamp context.

Bovard's column allows us to test two rival theories. Hypothesis one: Bovard and the WSJ readers were enraged that the three “de's” produced a criminogenic environment and led to a “crime wave” of fraud because they are enraged by fraud and the theoclassical dogmas that lead us to repeatedly adopt the three “de's” despite the recurrent disasters they cause. Hypothesis two: Bovard and the WSJ readers were enraged by fraud by poor people and refuse to apply the same logic and moral outrage to the vastly greater and more damaging crimes led and generated by elite financial CEOs. Instead, they will blame “the government” and make excuses for the elite frauds. My bet is on the second hypothesis, but I hope to be proven wrong.

Bill Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He spent years working on regulatory policy and fraud prevention as Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention, Litigation Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and Deputy Director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement, among other positions.

Bill writes a column for Benzinga every Monday. His other academic articles, congressional testimony, and musings about the financial crisis can be found at his Social Science Research Network author page and at the blog New Economic Perspectives.

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Good Eatin? Stocks At The 200-Day Moving Average

With the benchmark index perched squarely atop this closely watched trendline, it's not too surprising to find that roughly half of all stocks in our database are above their respective 200-day moving averages, and roughly half are below. The data is pretty interesting, though, when you look at the results by sector, and then throw some sentiment stats into the equation.

Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/06/27/good-eatin-stocks-at-the-200-day-moving-average/

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Study: Entrepreneurs First Get Down to Business in the Classroom

Adults classroomEntrepreneurs aren't just born; they're made -- in classrooms.

A new study by Babson College found "overwhelming evidence" that even just a few elective courses in entrepreneurship can inspire students to later launch their own businesses.

Researchers at the Wellesley, Mass., school said the findings should put another dent in the old argument that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. "We now have excellent empirical evidence that it makes a difference," they wrote. "We think that entrepreneurship should be taught not only for the production and training of entrepreneurs but also to help students decide if they have the right stuff to be entrepreneurs before they embark on careers for which they may be ill-suited."

If students want to really light a fire under their unformed dreams to someday launch a startup, three classes are better than two, the researchers added. The extra lesson time apparently further persuades students to become their own bosses. But taking just one class doesn't do the trick, researchers determined. Apparently, some take a single course out of curiosity and decide that running a business isn't for them.

The study also found that taking classes had a greater impact than having parents who were entrepreneurs, and that the number of students who desired to begin a company and later actually began one did not differ between undergraduates and graduate students.

A handful of Babson professors analyzed the career paths of 3,755 Babson graduates from 1985 to 2009. Their conclusion: "We believe that entrepreneurship should be taught to every business student because it is the very origin of all businesses -- after all, there would be no business schools if there had never been any entrepreneurs!"

Note that the findings might not be agenda-free. Babson is a business school, and a good one: Its MBA program was ranked first in entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report in 2010, and its undergraduate program was ranked 17th by Bloomberg Businessweek.

But the point is well-taken: Learning about entrepreneurship can be a smart first step on the road to actually becoming an entrepreneur.

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Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/06/26/study-entrepreneurs-first-get-down-to-business-in-the-classroom/

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What?s Wrong in America? Laurence Meyer ?Nails It?


It is not often that I witness an individual pierce through the smoke and mirrors that disguise our nation’s central problems and state succinctly what Sense on Cents believes so strongly. I had the benefit of capturing the wisdom of just one such individual this morning. I welcome sharing the wise perspective of one Laurence Meyer, as highlighted in this morning’s Wall Street Journal,

“I think [pessimism about the state of the country] has absolutely nothing to do with the current cyclical state of the economy. It’s not our budget deficit. It’s not China. It’s our education deficit. You can’t be 20th in the world in every field and be a competitive economy.

We’re a declining economic power. And, I think, you should be worried about it. And the chances of things getting better, as opposed to worse, are limited by our dysfunctional government and ugly political dynamics.”

Laurence Meyer,

Senior managing director and co-founder, Macroeconomics Advisers

How is it that the supposedly greatest superpower in the world has an education system that generates such abysmal results?

In my opinion, the problems start at home in the form of dysfunctional family units but are then exacerbated by what Meyer describes as our dysfunctional government and ugly political dynamics. Regrettably the dysfunctional units on both sides feed upon themselves and then our nation as a whole. Far too many of these dysfunctional units have proven themselves incapable and/or disinterested in protecting and educating the kids than in protecting their own self-interests.

Go ahead and take your shot at me if you’d like. I will merely point at our educational rankings which speak volumes and ask how we will fix that mess, especially in the urban settings of our country.

We ALL pay for the travesties and turmoil that abound from these dysfunctional realities.

Navigate accordingly.

With his bold and forthright statement, Meyer gains immediate induction into the Sense on Cents Hall of Fame.

Larry Doyle

Isn?t it time to subscribe to all my work via e-mail, an RSS feed, on Twitter or Facebook?

Please get your friends and colleagues to do the same. Thanks!!

I have no affiliation or business interest with any entity referenced in this commentary. The opinions expressed are my own. I am a proponent of real transparency within our markets so that investor confidence and investor protection can be achieved.

 

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Is Bernanke Failing His Fed Mission Or Just Delusional?

Regardless of the method used to look at prices, it is clear that Bernanke has not been successful at maintaining price stability since taking over as Fed chairman. Mandate not accomplished. It is clear that the jobs data has deteriorated considerably since Bernanke took the reins at the Fed. Mandate not accomplished.

Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/06/24/is-bernankes-fed-failing-its-mission-or-just-delusional/

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BRASS RING: Chris Christie Invited To Schmooze With Media Moguls (And Bloomberg!) In Sun Valley


Chris ChristieChris Christie is hitting the big time.

The New Jersey governor, who has made a name for himself with his brash style and strict budget cuts, will be heading to Aspen next week to party it up with media and tech moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, reports the New York Post.

The annual Allen & Co. retreat draws the likes of Mayor Bloomberg and Cory Booker as well as top "brass" from Netflix, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL and Twitter.  

Presumably Christie will not be taking the governor's helicopter.  But he is expected to be lining the coffers for a possible 2016 run.

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