The old shell game

Richard Fernandez has a great line about the financial situation over in Europe:

Perhaps the deep dark secret of the financial crisis is this. Nobody is bailing anybody out. They are simply moving the debt around like a pea under a shell, keeping just one step ahead of the crunch. Maybe this explains why, despite the trillions of dollars in disbursements, rescues, restructuring packages and bailouts, the water in the European hold is just as high as it was before. Just as high and rising.

Or is it just a high stakes game of hot potato.  At some point, the music stops and someone will be left holding the bag.  Of course, the bag will be filled with worthless IOUs, but hell....let's just keep bribing the orchestra to keep playing.

Do as I say, union style

We keep hearing from the unions that those evil banks are against the "worker".  Well, Peter Schweizer, has a different story for us from Business Insider:

Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans.

And contrary to Big Labor’s claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members—only to the union bosses.

Consider, for example, the “SEIU New Rewards Visa Card” and the AFL-CIO “Union Plus” card.  With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively.

This turns into huge money:  In FY2011, according to its LM-2 filing with the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO received approximately $28,163,266.00 from credit card revenue.

And it's not like this is good for the card holder:

Both the AFL-CIO and SEIU try to give their members the impression that their cards are superior to others on the market, but they’re not.  The SEIU, for example, offers an introductory rate of 12.24% APR to 22.24%, which is consistent with the industry standards the union have labeled “predatory.”  The SEIU card boasts that it doesn’t charge a late fee.  But union members should read the fine print; if they miss a payment, their rate skyrockets to 27.99%.

Nerdwallet, which Money magazine calls the “Best Credit Card Site” on the web, compares the value of more than 1,000 credit cards.  They thrashed the Union Plus card’s slick advertising and complex fine print.

Worse, Nerdwallet points out that many of the card’s so-called benefits are already available by virtue of union membership.  “We are appalled at the popularity of the Union Plus Credit Card,” says Nerdwallet.  “Avoid the Union Plus Credit Card.”

But it's good for the union treasury.  And thus, the Democratic Party.

In light of Tuesday's vote in Wisconsin, we just wanted you to know.  Read the whole article.

Thanks to Powerline for the pointer.