Infinite Unknown

June 25 (Bloomberg) – American Express Co., the biggest U.S. credit-card company by purchases and cash advances, said customers are falling further behind on their debt, signaling the economy is worsening.

“Business conditions continue to weaken in the U.S. and so far this month we have seen credit indicators deteriorate beyond our expectations,” Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault said in a statement today announcing the company would receive as much as $1.8 billion in a settlement with competitor MasterCard Inc.

American Express and rivals Capital One Financial Corp. and Discover Financial Services have fallen by more than a third in the past 12 months in New York trading as consumers absorb the housing slump, rising unemployment and higher food and fuel bills. New York-based American Express adopted a “cautious view” for the year in January after cardholder spending slowed and overdue payments rose in December.

“If you look at the employment situation, clearly that’s deteriorated, and consumer confidence is down as well,” said Sanjay Sakhrani, an analyst with KBW Inc. in New York who has a “market perform” rating on the stock. “Both play a key role in the credit-card industry.”

The Federal Reserve today left its benchmark interest rate at 2 percent, saying “uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high.” Consumer prices rose 4.2 percent in the 12 months ended in May, the fastest pace since January, while the unemployment rate rose by the most in more than two decades.

Consumer Confidence

Confidence among Americans dropped to the lowest level in 16 years, the Conference Board said yesterday.

Continue reading »

Tags: Bank of America, Citigroup, Consumer Confidence, Credit Card, debt, Fed, Federal Reserve, Food Prices, Inflation, Oil Prices, Recession, Unemployment

The Dollar will be destroyed.

There will be a controlled collapse of the stock market and the economy.

Then there will be no more objections to a cashless totally controlled and monitored society anymore:

First the debit card and then the implanted microchip, that by the way causes cancer and opens the door to control your thoughts, feelings and behavior. This is the ultimate Mind Control.

That’s how it is all planned by the elite. This is called the New World Order. - The Infinite Unknown

Related articles:
- CASPIAN RELEASES MICROCHIP CANCER REPORT
- The Microchip: Health, Privacy, Civil Rights And Freedom Under Siege
U.K. to Begin Microchipping Prisoners
- Met Police officers to be ‘microchipped’ by top brass in Big Brother style tracking scheme
Every single Metropolitan police officer will be ‘microchipped’….
…there will not be any choice about wearing one.
- UK: Compulsory microchipping of dogs
- U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students
So far the RFID chips are only implanted in the schoolbag to monitor the students movements.
- The Microchip is here !!! - New World Order

Elites Seek Control Over Rising Cashless Society

Source: Rogue Government
06-24-2008
Lee Rogers

The terrorists in the federal government are continuing their push to implement a cashless economic enslavement system. According to a legislative notice from the U.S. Senate, a new Housing Bill (HR 3221) contains a provision that will require nearly every online credit card transaction to be reported directly to the Internal Revenue Service. The insanity of this is obvious and it is nothing more than a way to give the government a means to track and trace as many private transactions as humanly possible. Previously, Visa’s CEO has stated that it is their goal to establish a cashless society by the year 2012. As technology increases, a greater number of businesses are accepting credit card payments. It wasn’t too long ago that fast food restaurants wouldn’t accept anything but cash for payment, now almost all of them accept credit cards. We are also starting to see biometrics utilized as a way to facilitate transactions. The bottom line is that there is an agenda at play to setup a cashless system that will allow the elite to take total control over the global economy. These people want to eliminate privacy in mutual exchanges and this is another step in doing just that.

The following is taken off of the legislative notice from the U.S. Senate Bill summary describing this draconian reporting scheme within HR 3221.

The proposal requires information reporting on payment card and third party network transactions. Payment settlement entities, including merchant acquiring banks and third party settlement organizations, or third party payment facilitators acting on their behalf, will be required to report the annual gross amount of reportable transactions to the IRS and to the participating payee. Reportable transactions include any payment card transaction and any third party network transaction. Participating payees include persons who accept a payment card as payment and third party networks who accept payment from a third party settlement organization in settlement of transactions. A payment card means any card issued pursuant to an agreement or arrangement which provides for standards and mechanisms for settling the transactions. Use of an account number or other indicia associated with a payment card will be treated in the same manner as a payment card. A de minimis exception for transactions of $10,000 or less and 200 transactions or less applies to payments by third party settlement organizations. The proposal applies to returns for calendar years beginning after December 31, 2010. Back-up withholding provisions apply to amounts paid after December 31, 2011. This proposal is estimated to raise $9.802 billion over ten years.

Groups like Freedomworks and companies like EBay have already come out denouncing this provision. The bottom line is that the federal government has no right to demand this type of information. Not only that, but how does the IRS intend on securing this information that they are going to collect from all of these online transactions? The whole concept is ridiculous and an obvious invasion of privacy. This is just another control mechanism that is being put in place so the establishment can eventually have the capabilities to track and trace every single electronic transaction. Clearly, a totalitarian big brother system is being put into place, and these criminals in Washington DC are just trying to take it to another level by hiding this provision in a 600+ page bill. It is a disgrace.

A few months ago, Elliot Spitzer the former New York Governor was forced out because his financial transactions were tracked back to the purchase of prostitution services. The banks already have the ability to track and trace transactions with impunity. This provision will centralize control to track and trace almost all electronic financial transactions and that is not a good thing.

It is unfortunate that we have a bunch of control freak Nazis that want to do these things, but this is the agenda. The modern day priest class that is in control seeks the total destruction of economic privacy and they are doing an excellent job at doing just that. They’ve managed to get everybody addicted to this cashless society and now they are bringing in the enslavement apparatus to track and trace activity within it. At first all transactions will be conducted using credit and debit cards, then it will be by way of biometrics, then it will be an implantable microchip. Or who knows, maybe they’ll just skip biometrics and go directly to an implantable microchip. Either way, the agenda is painfully clear, and it is completely unacceptable. Hopefully this legislation will get defeated, but we shouldn’t be holding our breath either. HR 3221 looks to be on the fast track to getting signed into law.

Much more powerful than power is love.

Power guided by love would create an enlightened society, instead of the ultimate tyranny.

It is very important that…

…”No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” - Albert Einstein

The Infinite Unknown
June 25, 2008

Tags: Albert Einstein, biometrics, Congress, Credit Card, dictatorship, Facism, Government, IRS, microchip, microchipping, New World Order, Surveillance, terrorists, U.S.

LOS ANGELES - As if sky-high gasoline prices weren’t frustrating enough, many owners of thirsty SUVs, pickups and motor homes who use a credit card at the pump are being blocked from getting a full tank.

That’s because many station operators have a $75 limit on Visa (V) or MasterCard (MA) transactions at the pump.

If motorists hit the limit, they must do a second transaction at the pump to finish filling. Another solution, though inconvenient: Go see the attendant to have the card swiped inside. But this information often is not on the pump, and it can be aggravating even if it is, so customers are venting their ire.

“It’s frustrating to them, and they let us know,” says Tom Robinson, president of Rotten Robbie, a 34-station chain based in Northern California. “There’s always an adjective associated with the pump, and it’s like ’stupid’ or worse.”

Station owners say they simply are passing through policies of Visa and MasterCard, which won’t reimburse them more than $75 per transaction at the pump if there’s a disputed charge or a fraudulent card is used.

May 30, 08

Source: USA Today

Tags: Credit Card, Gas, Oil, Oil Prices

WASHINGTON—Studies indicate that credit card defaults and related write-offs increased drastically since 2006. Today, lenders write off 33 percent more in credit card debt than they did two years ago.

Statistics show that about 35 percent of all credit card holders are already exhibiting signs of possible default. Late credit card payments result in fees many consumers can’t afford.

Credit card debt accelerated to unprecedented heights since bank loans began to dry up due to mortgage defaults. Total U.S. credit card debt reached almost $800 billion in November 2007, up from around $680 billion in March of last year, according to the latest available government statistics.

In the aftermath of the U.S. mortgage crisis, the credit card bubble may be next to burst. In the past few years, banks have aggressively marketed credit card ownership and usage to consumers with limited income and low credit scores. Credit card standards remain lax, while loan standards have tightened to a degree. Continue reading »

Tags: Credit Card, Credit Crisis, crisis, debt, default, Fed, Mortgages, U.S.

Be it ever so devalued, $1 trillion is a lot of dough.

That’s roughly on a par with the Russian economy. More than double the market value of Exxon Mobil Corp. About nine times the combined wealth of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Yet $1 trillion is the amount of defaults and writedowns Americans will likely witness before they emerge at the far side of the bursting credit bubble, estimates Charles R. Morris in his shrewd primer, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.” That calculation assumes an orderly unwinding, which he doesn’t expect.

“The sad truth,” he writes, “is that subprime is just the first big boulder in an avalanche of asset writedowns that will rattle on through much of 2008.”

Expect the landslide to cascade through high-yield bonds, commercial mortgages, leveraged loans, credit cards and — the big unknown — credit-default swaps, Morris says. The notional value for those swaps, which are meant to insure bondholders against default, covered about $45 trillion in portfolios as of mid-2007, up from some $1 trillion in 2001, he writes.

Morris can’t be dismissed as a crank. A lawyer, former banker and author of 10 other books, he knows a thing or two about the complex instruments that have spread toxic debt throughout the credit system. He once ran a company that made software for creating and analyzing securitized asset pools. Yet he writes with tight clarity and blistering pace. Continue reading »

Tags: bubble, Credit Card, Economy, hedge funds, high-yield bonds, leveraged loans, Meltdown, Mortgages, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown