If youve tried to expand your borrowing privileges on a credit card debt account or applied for a residential home mortgage over the past year, youre probably already aware that the commercial lending industry has begun to investigate the private lives of their potential clients with a new found ferocity that has some consumer advocates worried about what the future may hold.  Appreciating the constraints of credit bureau information (from whose reports we receive the all important three digit credit score), some firms have begun to gather data never before available to the underwriters approving or declining loans that would include eviction notices, lapsed rental history, and the failure to maintain familial support payments as determined by the courts.  Without question, access to this sort of knowledge would improve the qualifying criteria utilized by the banks prior to offering funds, but is the cost of providing such informational resources too high?

Although still only a theoretical notion, some of the largest corporate lenders have announced that plans for utilizing the data are currently under consideration, and our elected officials seem to believe the deepening attention to at risk areas of consumer behavior would be more than worth any potential fears of intrusion by the business community into customer affairs.  Of course, from the point of view of governmental arbiters, the increased focus and elevated publicity given to such missteps as hiding from property tax liens or defaulting upon child support should only urge heightened caution and provoke debt relief efforts among Americans that never should have allowed such problems to fester in the first place, but that perspective has hardly quieted critics of the proposed policy change.

“Its all well and good to say that responsible consumers wouldnt mind a little more light thrown upon their transactions,” said debt settlement negotiation specialist George MacDonald, “but do we really think that the poorest families are missing these bills out of nothing more than an arrogant carelessness?  With so many heads of households barely employed despite their best efforts and fighting to avoid bankruptcy, its a mockery of the whole financial system to pretend that credit scores have any sort of basis in morality.  Every possible study has proven that the men and women of this country will do everything in their power to pay back their lenders when they can, but thats just not always going to be possible in this economy.  Do we want these small accidents and they are small and they are, in the broadest sense, accidents to sink the consumers chances for bettering their lives ever after?”

The lenders answer, sadly enough, seems to be yes.  At the point, the public discontent with allowing corporate America to peer inside their dirty laundry seems not at all to bother the banks obsessed with further scrutinizing the innermost workings of their prospective clients.  We should all admit that the credit card debt relief crisis ongoing throughout the United States suggests that some barriers to a freely borrowing consumer base over used to relying upon exaggerated balance limits that enables the already impoverished to dig their own fiscal graves, but this hardly seems to warrant such unmitigated affronts to privacy.  “Even if you dont mind unearthing the hidden skeletons of tax cheats and alimony scofflaws,” concludes MacDonald, “just wait until youve been denied a mortgage because of some old dispute with a landlord twenty years ago!”

The controversial plan to cap benefits has been defeated in the House of Lords but the government has vowed to fight on in attempting to get the legislation approved.

A bishops amendment that child benefits should not be included in the £26,000 per year cap was supported by crossbench, Labour and Liberal Democrat peers by 252 votes to 237.

Gillian Guy, chief executive at national charity Citizens Advice, warned that if the bill passes it will have a “disproportionate impact” on some of the countrys most vulnerable families.

If such a comment is justified, it may particularly impact on those struggling with debt.

Children, breadwinners who have lost their jobs and people who cannot work due to illness are among those who would be hit by the proposed cap, she said.

Ms Guy acknowledged the coalition is right to attempt to simplify the “complex” benefits system, but stressed certain safeguards must be put in place.

Without these, she warned: “The combined impact of these sweeping welfare reforms and huge cuts will be catastrophic for a lot of families already stretched to the limit.”

All around the globe, anxious markets are waiting to find out how the Greek crisis will play out. With every day, comes another media report of dire economic news – this something that didn’t happen or that something which did. It is now all rushing toward a March dénouement, when some €14.5 billion worth of Greek sovereign bonds are due to mature. It will either culminate with a bang or a bust, though quite a few economists are sure it will be the latter.

Right now, the negotiations between the Greek government and their private bondholders is at an impasse of sorts. Greece’s private creditors say they cannot “voluntarily” accept any additional losses even as they now consider taking losses of as much as 70%. Some economi

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Americans have racked up excessive amounts of unsecured credit card debt just trying to stay alive during the economic crisis of the past few years. While the economy is coming back, they are still left with the debt that was created just to survive those years. For many, this debt seems like an insurmountable situation yet it isn’t. Not with debt settlement as an option, it isn’t.

Unsecured credit card debt can undo even the most concerned and diligent consumer. It sneaks up and amasses itself so easily and then it is a huge problem to get rid of. With salaries still staying static and unemployment still rampant, it stands to reason that many can’t see their way clear of their debt. These are the people for whom debt settlement can be the biggest find of their lives. Unlik

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Specialist lifestyle insurance provider Protect your bubble have snapped up two awards in the prestigious The Money Awards, in the Best Start Up and Best Use of Social Media categories.

The Money Awards were set up to recognise and celebrate businesses and individuals within the Finance industries, and Protect your bubble (who offer lifestyle insurance products such as gadget, life, travel and pet insurance etc) stood out from their competitors in these two categories.

The Judging Panel said: “What really separates Protect your bubble from their competition is how they aren’t afraid to try anything in order to promote name and brand awareness, while providing exceptional customer services and good value products.

“Within just three years they have grown exponentially, from being a start up to becoming a recognised brand name that has a year on year growth of 100%.”

Commenting on their use of social media, the Judges added: “Protect your bubble go above and beyond what most insurance companies do, providing personal, 24/7 support via their social media channels and they seize opportunities, with research and development being pivotal to their success. They real

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As millions of consumers are still struggling to get their finances under control in the new year, many experts are now predicting that consumer spending will likely slip somewhat compared with the growth seen in the last quarter of 2011.

Financial difficulties are still plaguing many Americans years after the apparent end of the recent recession, and these problems are expected to depress consumer spending in the new year, according to a report from the New York Times. The forecasting company Macroeconomic Advisors believes consumer spending will grow roughly 2 percent in the first half of the year, down from about 3.6 percent in 2011s fourth quarter, but up slightly from 1.8 percent in the third quarter.

Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy, the report said. Read more…

Maintaining the attempt to keep these pieces upbeat for a full week, today we are happy to announce that the level of unemployment in Germany has fallen to its lowest level in the nation’s modern history.

At the end of the Second World War, Churchill described the ideological schism between eastern and western Europe as an Iron Curtain which had fallen across the continent, dividing the capitalist, democratic west from the communist countries of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations. It took almost fifty years before the curtain was finally lifted and a seminal act in this process was the fall o the Berlin wall and subsequent re-unification of Germany which had been splintered into East and West Germany in the embers of the war.

West Germany was the poster boy of post war success, but the same could not be said of East Germany which had fared badly under communism. W

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If your debt has become overwhelming and you have fallen behind on payments or worry that you may not be able to continue making payments on time, debt consolidation may offer a means of managing your debt. This strategy involves making a single payment each month for your debt instead of having to make payments to several creditors each month. It may also help you manage your debt by lowering interest rates and waiving late fees. However, debt consolidation may affect your ability to obtain a mortgage.

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Over the years, even as theyve fooled around with every imaginable alteration to the format of billing statements and leveraged monthly minimums, the corporate behemoths responsible for the great American credit card debt totals have steadfastly refused to even consider the notion of a systematic debt settlement program for a set of borrowers who meet the same (desperate) criteria.  Indeed, while the managerial representatives of some lending institutions may be eventually convinced to reduce the amount of money owed after negotiations pursued by professionals hired for the task by individual consumers, such concessions run strictly contrary to the stated principles of upper echelon banking executives who appear to still consider any discussion about lowered balances tantamount to negotiating with terrorists.

In fact, now that the burgeoning credit card lobby can effectively herd a broad enough selection of government officials to originate new pieces of legislation or weaken existing rules, the members of the United States Congress conditioned to act upon the lenders whims (while ignoring the demands of the electorate for federally aided credit card debt relief measures) went so far as to enact a litany of restrictions against debt settlement negotiation as commonly practiced by trained specialists.  Most shamefully of all, even as veteran reporters clucked tongues at one another while witnessing the blatant capitulation of our political leadership to orders sent directly from the superbanks boards of directors, the press stayed silent through blithe neglect or, worse, clouded the issues by exaggerating the spread of malfeasant settlement counselors and elaborating the damage caused by those few incidents reported.

In retrospect, it was more than apparent why the corporate banking interests wished to vanquish settlement from the earth before each and every head of household overwhelmed by bills attempted to barter down credit card totals when circumstances permitted.  With advertising driven mass media outlets inextricably linked to credit card companies revenue flow and a political system dearly requiring substantive campaign reform guidelines, we probably shouldnt have expected anything nobler, but, for consumer advocates and debt relief specialists, there was a profoundly depressing tinge to the spectacle of putative statesmen and women sweating blood to halt further societal progress of debt relief maneuvers.  By the time the laundry list of government limitations were imposed upon those businesses offering negotiation assistance shaking the debt relief industry to the core and ensuring that more traditional financial counselors stayed away from confronting the creditors it seemed a small miracle that any debt settlement firms managed to avoid bankruptcy protection amidst new realities.

In the years following the legislation, though, not only have the strongest companies advertising themselves as debt settlement providers manage to completely retool their business plans and compensatory schedules to emerge healthier than ever before but many lenders have begrudgingly taken the initiative to develop de facto settlement arrangements with fractious account holders otherwise unlikely to ever afford remuneration.  While the settlement provisions floated by creditors representatives arent nearly as magnanimous on average as the deals negotiated by specialists, the efforts themselves signifiy a fundamental sea change in lender attitudes, and, if nothing else, the trend should guarantee we wont again \have to suffer through empty rhetoric castigating the supposed evils of debt settlement on the floor of the Senate any time soon.