savannah6st9: Making Money Your

The following is supposedly a letter written by a Montana farmer to Alan Simpson, a former senator from Wyoming.

Simpson was the co-chair of the commission President Obama appointed in 2010 to look at ways to fix our deficit problem. The recommendations of the commission were instantly ignored.

Last year, Sen. Simpson compared Social Security to a milk cow with 310 million teats. He also called America's senior citizens the "greediest generation."

This letter points out that Sen. Simpson himself, along with many other career politicians, has spent his life sucking on the taxpayer's teat.

We have no idea if the letter is real, but we imagine it captures the feelings of many Americans as they watch their dysfunctional government drive the country ever-deeper into a hole by making decisions that seem designed only to get them re-elected.

Given the extent of our current financial problems, some government leaders at some point are going to have to break promises made to Americans by their government predecessors--predecessors who made promises they knew they couldn't keep.

The politicians could make this news go down a bit easier if they imposed the consequences of some of these broken promises on themselves.

Here's the text of the supposed letter to Mr. Simpson. We've edited out some adjectives and expletives.

Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight...

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public tit for FIFTY YEARS.

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).

3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you are proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN.

5 I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you propose to change the rules of the game.. Why? Because you mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills.

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling bs on your incompetence. Well, now I have a few questions for YOU.

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you and Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. You have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your political careers. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.

The banks of America recently pitched enough of a hissy fit to effectively neuter swipe fee reform — after they raised rates, instituted fees and canceled rewards programs — claiming they'd be swiped into the poor house by the reduced fees. But not to worry, bankers are a clever folk and they always have a way to profit off your transactions. Like, for example, colleting information about your shopping habits.

According to CNN, Wells Fargo, Citi, Discover and others have begun gathering the information about your shopping habits — where you shop, what you but, how much you spend. Retailers contact the banks about the types of customers they want to target and the banks craft custom coupons which, if used, the bank sees a nice chunk of change from.

From CNN:

Say you use your Citi-issued debit card to buy a pair of shoes at Nordstrom, and then Citi sells that information to a series of retailers. As a result, you receive a coupon from Macy's for a 20% discount on shoes at its store. The coupon is delivered by Citi, however, not from Macy's.

To redeem the coupon, you must respond by text, e-mail or by checking off a box next to the offer on your online bank statement. Once you go into Macy's to buy the shoes, Citi will retroactively credit your account for the 20% discount. Some banks, however, only let you cash in your discounts via their online portals.

Retailers pay the banks somewhere between 10-15% of the purchase price when a coupon is used. The bank keeps about 25% of that fee with the rest going to a third-party service. So if you pay $1000, the bank could end up making upward of $37.50 from the retailer, on top of what they were paid for your original information.

Some banks have already started programs like this and in many cases the customer is automatically enrolled, though they are legally obliged to let you opt out.

And while some say the targeted discounts will increase customer loyalty with retailers and provide consumers with coupons they will actually use, experts warn against potential pitfalls, like fine print that excludes certain brands or adds restrictive conditions on getting the discount. If your bank applies the discount retroactively, you might not notice you didn't save any money until after you've made your purchase.

"There's a risk that you might not get what you're hoping to get — you're leaving the store and you don't know how much you were actually charged for something," the CEO of CardHub.com tells CNN. "Then if you don't see it on your credit card statement, what do you do? Call your bank? Call the intermediary company? Or call the merchant? If they start using fine print, the whole thing's just going to be a big mess."

As for privacy concerns, the companies that provide this service claim that retailers never see any identifying info about the bank customer, just a numeric code. Only the bank has the ability to match up that code with the customer's account. While this should inspire confidence, it means that your data is only as secure as your bank's account system.

While the idea of targeted discounts — assuming they actually meet your shopping needs — programs like this should be opt-in only. Wouldn't that be in the best interest of everyone? The customer signs up for a program; the retailer knows that the customer has opted in and thus interested in receiving the coupons; happy customer receives coupon, uses it and bank gets money.

Banks' billion-dollar idea: Sell your shopping data [CNN]

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Friday, July 29, 2011

Making Money Your

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