Bill is busy blogging about soccer for the next few weeks, so let me step in to be the one outraged by the way airlines are treating us now. As my colleagues Richard Zoglin and Christine Lim report:
One category of flyer is still getting the shaft this summer: the estimated 120 million U.S. travelers who are members of airline frequent
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Strategic mortgage default has “really been a blessing,” says one Florida man, who stopped making payments last summer. His mother, who lives a few blocks away, has been in default since the spring of 2008, and says, “the longer I’m in foreclosure, the better.” They both pay a lawyer not to actually help them keep their homes in the long …
Also, financial secrets that your millionaire next-door neighbor will never tell you—starting with the fact that he’s actually a millionaire.
Sounds pretty darn logical, doesn’t it? One study shows that 20% of subprime borrowers who are bad with numbers were in foreclosure, compared to just 5% of subprime borrowers who scored high on financial literacy tests. As for the banks and agents who agreed to lend money for these subprime mortgages in the first place, it is unclear how …
Underwater homeowners explain why they’re walking away from their mortgages, even though they can afford the payments.
An ethicist argues that we must abolish caveat emptor and mandate truth in advertising. If that can be done, he says, it’ll be good not only for consumers, but businesses and the economy as a whole.
The prospect of a merger between United Airlines and US Airways sent share prices of both airlines up this morning. Investors are reasoning that the combined carrier will be able to reduce capacity—3% nationally according to one analyst—and thus raise prices. There’s too much capacity in the U.S., so none of the carriers can charge …
Yesterday, in writing about Spirit Air’s plan to charge a fee for carry-on bags, I concluded by joking that pay toilets were next. Ha-ha. But then I got an email from SmarterTravel alerting me that Ryanair, the king of cheapo European carriers, was already working on exactly that. The carrier actually plans to install pay toilets on …
In its seemingly unending quest to tick off as many of its customers as often as possible, the airline industry has added another chapter: Spirit Air announced it will charge passengers for CARRY-ON bags. You get the first one on board for free, assuming it fits under the seat in front of you. The fee for the second will be as high as …
Also, who is responsible for the all-too-common scenario in which homeowners can’t keep up with their mortgage payments? Most people blame homeowners for taking out loans they couldn’t repay, rather than the banks that facilitated those loans.
“How did you like it?” Bob Lutz asks me. It, in this case, is Chevrolet’s Volt, the electric –drive vehicle that the company is introducing this year. And this is a loaded question, since Lutz is GM’s soon-to-retire vice chairman, a Detroit design deity who put style back into GM’s line, and the ultimate car nut. Volt is …
Walking away from an underwater mortgage does not necessarily equate to washing your hands of responsibility. By opting for strategic default on your mortgage, you could be risking a lot more than just your credit score. In many states, lenders can sue you for what it still owed on the mortgage, and they can do so years after you’ve …
