| Experian offers credit freeze facility from November 1
Consumer credit reporting bureau Experian has announced that it will be offering its customers in 50 states and the District of Columbia, the chance to freeze their credit histories starting November 1. Experian is the second firm after TransUnion to offer consumers the option of freezing their credit histories. By freezing histories, consumers can block access to their reports by new creditors. The company said that it would be charging $10 every time a consumer wants to freeze his/her history temporarily or permanently. "It will be one option among a broad range of fraud-assistance tools we already provide to consumers so that they may make the choice best suited to their situation," said Kerry Williams, group president of credit services and decision analytics business at Experian. "Now that a national model for file freezing has emerged, Experian is offering this option to help prevent consumer confusion." TransUnion was the first company to offer this option, which will come into effect starting October 15.
ChooseYourVote.Org Interviews Presidential Candidate Frank Moore
I replied that the goal was to get the rights for the disabled [and for all people] to be complete and equal…and that included the right to be political. I would not surrender that, or any other, right. So I started doing political columns for underground newspapers, joined Students for Democratic Society and The Peace and Freedom Party. I did political pranks…such as rolling in my wheelchair into the Marines Recruiting Office to join, offering to push the BUTTON with my head pointer. But after the Kent State killings, I switched from straight politics to art, performance, and community building as my tools for effecting social change. In the early 90s I and five other performance artists were targeted by Sen. Jesse Helms in what is commonly seen as the first battle of the cultural wars. This placed me in a great position to fight for our freedoms! 3.
Is it the end for shopping fever?
But, like her fellow Britons, Hall is now facing a debt pile as big as her ironing stack; she knew she had to stop shopping when she counted 93 items in her basket. 'My clothes had encroached on my partner's side and on the top of the chest of drawers there were 3ft towers of ironing I had no space to put away. There were hundreds and hundreds of items.' But if Shopaholics Anonymous was to open a branch in your town, it would be a broad church. While Hall's habit was extreme, many Britons are facing up to the toll that being high-street junkies has taken on their finances. For more than a decade, shoppers have turned out, month after month, to spend their hard-earned cash, driven by the whims of fast fashion and the interior design tips proffered by home makeover programmes. But living costs are now rising faster than any time in the past decade: so whether it's filling the tank, your monthly mortgage payment or a trip to the supermarket, the spare cash we used to burn in Topshop or on the latest album release at HMV is dwindling.
2007 Wrap-Up
The dollar's share of global foreign-exchange reserves fell to a record low in the third quarter as demand for U.S. assets waned after the subprime-mortgage market collapsed. The U.S. currency accounted for 63.8% of reserves at the end of September, down from 65% at the end of June, the International Monetary Fund said... The share of euros increased to 26.4%, from 25.5%. The figures suggest central banks diversified out of the dollar as it fell to the lowest level in a decade. Investors sold a record amount of U.S. securities in August when defaults on subprime mortgages rippled through financial markets and the Federal Reserve signaled it would cut interest rates." December 27 - Financial Times (Daniel Dombey): "At the end of a year in which the dollar has endured a marked decline against other currencies, an unsettling question is beginning to be voiced: can the troubles of the US currency be confined to the financial world or are they set to undermine Washington's place on the international stage? 'This is the neglected dimension of the dollar's decline,' says Flynt Leverett, a former senior National Security Council official under President George W.
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