Bent Corner

I noticed on my Citi Mastercard statement that Citi is raising my interest rate from 7.99% to 14.99%. There was no reason given. There was no justification for this huge increase.

I went online to see if anyone else was having this problem and it appeared that I was not alone. I read a New York Times article that talked about Citigroup raising the interest rates of most customers, the average being 2%-3%. Mine’s going up 7.99%.

I called Citi and asked why my rate is being increased 7.99%. I got to speak to someone who obviously was merely reading from a script. She couldn’t tell me why my rate was being increased to 7.99%, only that everyone was getting a rate increase. I told her about the New York Times article and pointed out that is said on average customers were looking at a 2%-3% rate increase. This is when she began to go off script. She informed me that I shouldn’t believe a magazine like the New York Times because they are routinely being sued for spreading false information. I informed her that the New York Times was actually a newspaper, not a magazine.

Getting nowhere with her, I asked to speak with someone else. She transferred me to someone else who seemingly had no idea what I was calling about. I had to repeat everything I had already said to the first person, repeating my question as to why my rate was being jacked up from 7.99% to 14.99%. He repeated that everyone was getting their rates increased. I asked him if everyone was looking at a 7.99% increase. He informed me that everyone is different and he couldn’t answer that question, but he offered to direct me to their public relations department. Huh?

My problem with this is that I cannot understand why my account is looking at 7.99% increase. I have excellent credit. I pay all my bills on-time. My Citi Mastercard is the only credit card I have. I routinely get pre-approved credit card offers in the mail with a interest rate far lower than 14.99%. In fact, only last week I got an offer from Citi offering to transfer any existing credit cards to Citi at the interest rate of 2.9% until July 2010.

Why would they extend this offer to me at the same time they are doubling my interest rate?

With talk of the federal government stepping in to bail out Citigroup with a large infusion of taxpayer funded bailout money, I cannot ignore the irony. My taxes will be going to help keep a company solvent that not only will be doubling my interest rate — even though they told Congress they wouldn’t do that — they cannot tell me why my interest rate is being nearly doubled.

A church in Wichita, Kansas has a sign in front of their church declaring that America now has a Muslim President and the LORD is really bothered about this. Included is a reference to the part of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3) that talks about having no other gods.

Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same god.  Contrary to what you might learn from reading a Chick tract, Allah in the Islamic faith is the same god found in the Old Testement.  Allah is simply the Aribic word for ‘God’. [MyFox Kansas City]

With all the take of a possible government handout for the American auto industry, I started to wonder how much an American auto worker who is a member of the UAW union makes?  From CNN Money:

The current veteran UAW member at GM today has an average base wage of $28.12 an hour, but the cost of benefits, including pension and future retiree health care costs, nearly triples the cost to GM to $78.21, according to the Center for Automotive Research.

By comparison, new hires will be paid between $14 and $16.23 an hour. And even as they start to accumulate raises tied to seniority, the far less lucrative benefit package will limit GM’s cost for those employees to $25.65 an hour.

So not only do they make a substantial amount of money for doing basically unskilled factory work, they receive a substantial benefits package including a pension. I didn’t even know people still got pensions. I cannot imagine making $28 an hour to work on an assembly line and not have to put one single penny of that money into a 401K for my retirement.

It must be nice.

I read an article over on the New York Times website detailing how the Mormon church was such a driving force in the movement to ban same-sex marriage in California. It’s an interesting read:

On Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.

“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.

In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.

So Alan Ashton, a man who doesn’t live in California, who made a fortune selling word processing software — coincidentally enough, I have to think that at least some of those WordPerfect users were gay — was directed by his tax exempt church to donate a vast sum of money to an organization dedicated to denying a basic civil right to a whole group of people.

I’ve got a huge problem with that.

I have nothing against Mormons. I’ve known quite a few over the years and I’m hard pressed to think of even one Mormon who I didn’t like on a personal level. With that said, I detest the fact that they have used their church to facilitate stripping a basic civil right to so many people with no connection to them whatsoever.

(source: blog.mint.com)

Maybe if GM and other American auto manufacturers had not spent so much time and money designing, building, and than marketing gas guzzling bohemiths, and instead concentrated efforts on designing fuel efficient cars (not trucks or SUV’s) they wouldn’t be losing so much money right now.  They would not be asking for a $25 billion bailout from the U.S. federal government.

The American auto industry is in trouble right now because they build expensive products that people don’t want.  Supporters of a government bailout for the American auto industry argue that if there isn’t a bailout, GM, Ford, and Chrysler will declare bankruptcy.  So what?  Isn’t that that the way it’s supposed to work?  Poorly run companies declare bankruptcy every day.  Why should the American auto industry be any different?

Why should someone who drives a Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic Hybrid have his or her tax dollars go to GM, Ford, and Chrysler?

I could try to sum up my feelings about Proposition 8, California’s ballot inititive to ban same-sex marriage, but I could never come close to articulating exactly how I feel about this topic.  Fortunately, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann did it for me.  He was able to put into words how I feel on this matter.

I feel strongly about this.  I didn’t “choose” to be heterosexual.  Why should I be able to marry the person that I love while gay people cannot?  To me, it’s a civil rights issue.  I’m not old enough to remember what things were like under Jim Crow.  If I lived in a society where I could sit at the front of the bus, but a black person could not, I would feel extremely embarrassed and even ashamed.

That’s how I feel about marriage.

Evidently there is now talk in Washington D.C. of giving around $50 billion to the American auto industry.  I think before either General Motors or Ford is given any tax dollars, someone needs to find out how much of that money will be trickle down to NASCAR. Both companies spend millions and millions of dollars every year on NASCAR.

Instead of spending millions helping Jeff Gordon turn left really, really fast, they should be investing in developing technology to make cars more fuel efficient.

They of course wont be doing that.

With all the talk of General Motors needing a bailout from the federal government just to stay afloat, I had to laugh when I read the following:

Despite the down economy, falling gas prices have driven consumers back to the sport utility vehicles they once gave the cold shoulder.

Workers at General Motor’s Arlington, Texas, SUV assembly plant began working overtime this month and are scheduled to remain on overtime for the rest of the year.

The plant, which employs 2,500 workers, is now the only GM factory building full-size sport utility vehicles like the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade.

The minute gas prices fall back to somewhat reasonable levels, GM responds by cranking out the Escalades. One of the reasons GM is facing bankruptcy is because of the vehicles it chooses to produce, mainly gas guzzling behemoths. Vehicles like the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade.

If the auto industry needs a bailout, let the oil industry bail them out. The American auto industry helped Big Oil generate massive profits by refusing to produce energy efficient vehicles.