Gift cards will be America’s second most popular present to give this holiday season, trailing only clothing. Six in 10 givers will buy someone spendable plastic, according to the National Retail Federation. But if gift recipients had their way, gift cards would be No. 1. (Clothing came in second, 61% [Keep reading]
As the Republican tax bill process comes to a head this week, you’re sure to hear a Tower of Babble about what it is — a middle-class tax cut, a middle-class tax increase, a deficit exploder. Fortunately, there’s data to help us out. Here’s an amazing story and analysis by The [Keep reading]
“It turns up being a joke…in a sick, sad kind of way.” As Americans return to their desks from the Thanksgiving holiday, they are learning about a tragic comedy that is indeed playing out in Washington D.C. Two people claim to run the federal agency devoted to protecting consumers from [Keep reading]
Here’s a question with a seemingly complex answer: Why is my credit card interest rate so high? After all, when banks pay consumers interest, the rate is a fraction of 1%. With car loans home loans, rates are 5 percent or less for buyers with good credit. So why is [Keep reading]
One of the themes of my Restless Project is that American consumers today are subject to major forces they can neither see, nor understand, nor plan for, and that’s a great source of day-to-day anxiety. Examples are all around us. Here’s one: Pew recently found that 46 percent of Americans [Keep reading]
Standard Oil committed many sins on the way to infamy, and Teddy Roosevelt’s s&*t list, but a big one was “vertical integration.” Rockefeller’s people owned oil refineries, and trucks that delivered gasoline, and the gas stations that sold it, and so on. It owned businesses up and down the supply [Keep reading]
You’ve probably heard of something called the “small sample size” problem. Well, if you are shopping for health care right now, that’s you. And that’s why it’s stupid to buy health insurance. To be more precise, I mean shopping for health insurance is a fairly futile, stupid exercise. Insurance companies [Keep reading]
For many years, the end of every scammer’s story — the sweatheart scam, the fake eBay product, the lottery “winnings” — went something like this: “Just wire me the money through Western Union.” Western Union is now paying a price for being so popular with criminals — $586 million. And [Keep reading]
I first met Rich Cordray the night before the first-ever Ohio state Consumer Protection Summit in Columbus back in 2010. It was long before the CFPB existed, and even longer before he would be considered for the job as America’s top consumer advocate. My book Stop Getting Ripped Off had [Keep reading]
Is renting (a home) the new buying? Single-family rentals—either detached homes or townhomes—are developing faster than any other portion of the housing market. These rentals outpace both single-family home purchases and apartment-style living, according to the Urban Institute. “Almost all the housing demand in recent years has been filled by [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan