The Fed is designed to be less sensitive to politicking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a disaster. Agencies like the SEC are political appointments. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a disaster. FDIC works pretty well, probably because it has limited jurisdiction. GAO works pretty well, because (as you point out) it has no real power.

Not sure there are any good institutional answers here, there are surely any number of bad ones. At some point though the electorate has to realize that its choices or lack thereof have consequences. What was it Churchill said about democracy ... ?

on max interest rates.

I don't actually know what my interest rate is because I always pay the card off in full when I use it. But I can do this because 1) I have a job (with insurance benefits), 2) I have good health. So far.

When I talk to people about financial literacy the one message I try to convey is that credit cards are EVIL and compare it to a "hot potato" - if you have it you want to quickly get rid of it. I hope the message is working.

Credit card companies deserve it. I truly believe "what comes around goes around."

Thanks for the reminder to check my settings. I like the "Amadeu" theme much better than the "tapestry" theme. Clean and crisp. For me it wasn't so much the red, but the black background with white lettering that I didn't like. Amadeu is bright and professional, IMO. Good job Robert!

current one, which has a mauve tone to it or the previous one, where I left a screen shot so people could compare?

(bear with me folks, I really need help when it comes to "doing my colors").

This morning you saw a series of blues. Currently the site is set on a new, alternative color scheme. What do you think of this one? Please let me know because I was torn between the two. As a refresher, here is the look from this morning:

401K
Saw this on Mother Jones. Thought it was quite appropriate

How about digging out the statistics intermixed with personal experience? The stats are there We have something like 20% of the country on food stamps yet we know the poverty line is such one cannot even pay rent with those numbers. and without kids, they will not pay for shelter for people.

The reason I am not fond of personal stories is because what happens is readers focus in on that individual and look for reasons to reject their experience. So, they can easily say "on that's just that guy and it's obvious that guy is a blankety blank" because there are no large numbers to prove that particular story is the rule and not the exception.

Also, in my view it takes away from getting any real policy/legislation change. You get people saying "that's awful" instead of "that's stupid" and we should change the system now to x,y,z. They empathize instead of seeing it as a systemic problem.

I've seen this happen over and over with Professionals who were squeezed out of their careers. They tell their story, then get character assassinated, all to deny this is a corporate agenda...to labor arbitrage professional workers, esp. tech workers. Let's say someone lost it and committed suicide. Well, the focus will be on their "chemicals" in their "brains" and looking for "personal issues" as the cause...instead of correlating that to financial ruin and being denied the right to work, a fundamental esteem issue in the U.S. and it should be a right for every American to have a good paying, stable job when they work hard. But the focus will be trying to categorize that person as just some fringe crazy instead of acknowledging the treatment of labor is a direct correlation to this unfortunate increase in self-inflected harm.

can you email me a screen shot offline? I checked a ton of browsers, but if you fire off a screen shot w/ Vista ver. FF ver. that will help me see if it's a display issue or a color issue. You can see I don't want to spend a hell of a lot of time on it if it's major and instead get this @&*)$@&!!! upgrade done and then work on those bugs. But if the site displays badly on a major OS/Browser that's bad juju.