Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Personal Finance, Economics and Investing

Even though I lifted the moniker from this article on CNN Money, the scare quotes are appropriate. I’ve written about the Credit Card Act of 2009 and its unintended consequences. Lucky for you, the law is starting to bear fruit. We’ve seen issuers who offer cards with 79.9% interest rates, at least this article features a few cards with redeeming qualities. Anyway, you can tell the title is a bit tongue in cheek, but let’s tackle the features in the three cards shown.

One of the provisions for receiving government funds through TARP caps executive salaries at $500,000. Companies argue that setting caps in that way leads to a talent drain – top employees who can receive a greater salary elsewhere will go do that. These predictions are coming true; TARP companies are losing talent to boutique firms that don’t have compensation limits. Is this the best effect on companies trying to pay back public money?

Rortybomb, a blogger and financial engineer from San Francisco posted an interesting spreadsheet based on the stress test results. Hunting through the stress test results, he found a chart on page 6 with ‘Baseline’ and ‘More Advanced’ numbers. Since that’s enough to do a linear extrapolation (of course, with two data points that probably isn’t the most accurate way to do it… see his background post) allowing you to set your own estimate for worst case unemployment numbers. Read on…