| Where have you gone, George Bailey?
ANOTHER HOLIDAY season has come and gone with more reruns of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." We could sure use banker George Bailey now that the mortgage mess threatens to do what the rapacious Mr. Potter, the town's richest citizen, could not: end the "nonsense" of providing mortgages for the working poor. For some time to come, people in the real world of 21st-century America without a good deal of money in the bank and super-secure jobs will find it difficult to qualify for mortgage loans. George Bailey isn't coming to the rescue. If you are a borrower, you may send your monthly payment to Bailey's bank, but Bailey is long since out of the picture. Shortly after originating your loan, Bailey sold it to a consolidator, very likely a government-sponsored agency such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac that packages individual mortgages into a mortgage-backed security.
High-Tech Shopping Carts Coming to Supermarkets
The system also uses radio-frequency identification to sense where the shopper's cart is in the store. The RFID data can help ShopRite and food makers understand shopping patterns, and the technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to people at certain points — an ad for 50 cents off Oreos, for example, when a shopper enters the cookie aisle. Microsoft said it is still working on how it will present commercials and coupons. Microsoft is also working with MediaCart and ShopRite to help advertisers reach potential consumers based on past grocery purchases, which are logged when they swipe their loyalty cards. "This is not all necessarily about bombarding consumers, about targeting advertising," said Scott Ferris, general manager of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group.
YOUR MONEY: Charities sometime prey on the elderly, too
My mother-in-law is in her 80s, a "Rockefeller Republican" who is still politically and civically active whenever her health allows it. Recently, however, she spent eight days in the hospital.While she was away, the phone rang almost every night with calls from telemarketers hoping she’d help out some political or charitable cause. While my in-laws are on the national do-not-call registry, political and charitable groups are exempted; a long history of being active donors has made them targets for every group that has a copy of the mooch list.My mother-in-law still picks her causes carefully; she’s socially liberal but fiscally conservative — the definition of a Rockefeller Republican — and wants to continue making a difference.So imagine the surprise when her mail included a letter from Fidelis — a national organization that is the antithesis of her politics — saying that her December donation had failed to go through because the credit-card information was incorrect.The note sparked my curiosity because so many things about it seemed out of place.
11/1 TNA Impact review by Wilkenfeld: Awesome show with a stellar main ...
Okay, it's a new week, and a new start. Let's see if TNA can win me back. I'm optimistic. [Opening Credits] The Angles make their way out to the ring. Kurt claims that the Genesis main-event is a classic ploy to get the title off a "beloved champion." The crowd is hot, mixing in "Angle sucks!" and "We want Nash" chants. Angle says he'll figure out who Sting's mystery partner is, because he has two degrees, watches CSI, Law and Order, and 24. Sting says that his partner is a former WWE and WCW champion, and someone who doesn't much like Kurt. How awesome will it be if Jericho swerves everyone and comes to TNA? Kurt says that those clues don't make sense, since everyone who knows Kurt likes him. Nash comes out to take issue with that universal generalization, pointing out that Kurt should perhaps be less worried about Sting's partner and more worried about his own.
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