Laws and regulations can be confusing.
For decades, consumer credit laws such as the Truth in Lending, Fair Credit Reporting, and Equal Credit Opportunity acts have been initiated to prevent abuses within the credit card industry nationwide. However, do consumers really know what these laws mean to them? Mike Sullivan, director of education for Take...

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac uniform mortgage instruments: the forgotten benefit to homeowners.
I. INTRODUCTION Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the giants of the home mortgage industry. Today they own or guarantee about forty percent of outstanding home mortgage debt in the United States. (1) In addition, their uniform mortgage instruments document the great majority of home mortgage loans....

Investors Optimistic About Their Portfolios, Worried About Economy; Growing concerns about residential real estate and consumer credit suggest weaker economy.
Byline: Dennis Jacobe Synopsis: The UBS/Gallup Index of Investor Optimism poll shows that investor optimism plunged in August while recording its third consecutive monthly decline. Still, even as investors' fears about the U.S. economy grow, they seem surprisingly optimistic about the future of their investment portfolios. ...

Save Our Homes Act includes appraiser coercion provision; receives industry support.
The Save Our Homes Act, introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., October 16, is aimed at addressing the rampant problem of predatory lending in the United States and calls for licensed and certified appraisers to be used in appraisals of "high cost" loans. The bill, H.R. 3322, would also...

THREE NATIONS OFFER STRONG CONSUMPTION POTENTIAL.
South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand are positioned for healthy expansion of private sector consumption during the remainder of 2002 and into 2003. All three should see balanced growth in both household and industrial expenditure. Four factors that these three nations have in common portend increased solid sales...

Plantersbank sees renewed SME borrowings.
Byline: FIL C. SIONIL Amidst the continued lethargic lending performance of the banking industry in the first semester of 2006, Planters Development Bank (Plantersbank) remains positive it will attain its loan portfolio programmed at P2.5 billion. Plantersbank President and Chief Operating Officer Ma. Flordelis F....

Legal loan sharking or essential service? The great "payday loan" controversy.
FEW THINGS FIRE up professional consumer advocates as quickly as a whisper of "payday lending." "Payday loans are a transfer of wealth from the poor and the poor-risk to the predatory and the powerful," says Jean Ann Fox, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of...

KOREAN CONSUMERS STRUGGLE WITH DEBT.
The rate of consumer debt is rapidly rising in South Korea but the government is reluctant to take corrective measures for fear of undermining already sluggish internal demand. Loose credit policies have been a key element in keeping internal demand afloat since 1998. Each year since the...

CREDIT CARD NATION: The Consequences of America's Addiction to Credit.
CREDIT CARD NATION: The Consequences of America's Addiction to Credit by Robert D. Manning Basic Books, $26.00 WITH 1.5 BILLION CREDIT cards floating around, $560 billion in outstanding credit-card debt, and negative personal savings rates, clearly credit-card debt in the United States is...

BPI reports P9-B net income in 2006, up 8%.
Byline: FIL C. SIONIL Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) registered a consolidated net income of P9 billion in 2006, an eight percent uptick over its P8.4-billion profits the year before, backed by upticks in its lending, deposit base, interest income and trading gains. In...