Teutonic Knight

Singing the American Express Blues

All --

Nothing to bragg about or even to be contrarian. My experience with AMEX had be pleasant and satisfying. They gave me a generous limit without even asking, a great term on a baleanc transfer like 0% with no transfer fees, great and responsive customer services, and the most clear, user friendly and readable web page (unlike some of the Big Banks that look so busy and dazzling to the eyes to to even hard to find anything). So just to be fair to AMEX, my 2-cents input.

Teutonic

American Consumers Aren't Spending, Or Borrowing

What has been happening is the following most likely scenario.

Middle Class Americans were awed by their precipitous 401(k) drop as much to six-figure levels. To make up for this loss, they forgo buying a new car or SUV (~$35K), cancel that annual family trip to the exotic tropical resort (~$10K), and send their kid to the Public Ivy vice the Private (~$100K), for a total savings of ~ $150K, roughly equivalent to that book-value (or most likely for real) loss.

Credit Card Crunch: Creating a New Generation of Subprime

To Market Folly,

Thank you for a substantive and credible article that is so timely.

Yes, I would concur with your assessment. The next Time Bomb is ticking, and ticking fast. BTW, we have the issue, what is your solution?

teutonic

25 Companies That Lost America Nearly $1 Trillion

Mr. Hill,

I wish you could spare a moment to answer one dumb question. I came from Canada over 3 decades ago. Over there they "used to" have far fewer banks than the U.S. has., and still much fewer now.

Why do we have so many banks in the U.S.? 10,000 or so including the credit unions?

From your list, isn't it time to vastly consolidate most if not all of them as soon as possible and retrain the folks to other, in my opinion, more "productive" industries and services?

Thanks in advance.

teutonic