The Advantages of Using a Credit Card in Canada

credit cardMethods of payment such as credit or debit cards have become the popular alternatives to cash, as a way of paying for pretty much all goods and services. Now, nearly everyone in Canada will own at least a debit or credit card. 9 out of 10 will own a credit card. These are high numbers, and this is a testament to how many outlets in this part of the world are accepting this convenient method of payment.

However, not everyone will qualify for a credit card. This is not just due to age but also financial circumstances, and this is where credit cards for bad credit canada will help. You are not necessarily excluded from owning a credit card because of your credit history. Continue reading

Tips to Improve Your Credit Score

credit cardThe best rule for using a credit card is to pay bills on time. However, the story doesn’t end there. You need to protect yourself from credit card fraud and find personally gratifying ways to use any rewards offered by card issuers.

In addition it’s imperative that you protect your personal information from cheats and scammers. Fortunately there are things you can do to secure your credit.

Switch from magnetic strip cards to embedded chip cards – they’re safer

Most retail merchants have acquired the technology to process chip-based cards. Chip-based cards help in fraud prevention. They prevent third parties from stealing and misusing your info by perpetrating fraudulent transactions in your name. Continue reading

While Elites Played Empire, America Fell Apart

political elitesCharles Hugh Smith – Our extraordinary misallocation of national treasure and political power has set a banquet of consequences that few are willing to face, much less address head-on. If we had to sum up this vast misallocation, we might start by characterizing it as the result of a multitude of elites playing Empire with money borrowed from future generations.

We can start the list of extraordinary misallocations of national treasure with the Neocon’s endless wars of choice. Ten years ago, estimates of the total cost of the Iraq misadventure were $3 trillion: Cost of Iraq War: $3 Trillion; Cost of Solar Plants to Power all 105 million U.S Households: $500 Billion (April 10, 2008)

(Yes, I know solar energy is not “the solution” due to intermittency, lack of storage, fossil fuels are needed to build and maintain the solar infrastructure, etc.–but the point is: would we be better off if we’d invested 20% of the money squandered on the Iraq misadventure on alternative energy, even with all its limitations?)

But this does not exhaust the list of extraordinary misallocations of treasure.Universities have found the funds to build grand edifices on campus (never mind the trillion dollars in student loan debt that funded the delusions of grandeur) while much of the rest of our educational infrastructure crumbles as deferred maintenance takes its inevitable toll.

Public transit systems such as the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART always find the funds to pay for hefty raises and gold-plated benefits for employees and managers, meanwhile the system’s core has crumbled due to–you guessed it–hundreds of millions of dollars in long-deferred maintenance.

While employee wages, benefits and pensions dominate local government outlays, maintenance is funded by selling bonds, which cost twice as much over the long run due to interest and other costs.

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2016 Theme #5: The Systemic Failure of High Finance

highCharles Hugh Smith – A number of systemic, structural forces are intersecting in 2016. One is the failure of high finance to fix the global economy’s systemic problems.

The operative conceit of the past 7 years has been that high finance can fix whatever’s broken in the world’s economies. According to this narrative, all the world needed to boost “growth,” employment and profits was lower interest rates, more liquidity, reverse repos and some other fancy financial footwork.

Once all this high finance generated more borrowing by debt-serfs, property developers, students, corporations buying back their shares and financiers skimming billions from asset bubbles, systemic problems would be dissolved or mitigated.

Cheap credit, asset bubbles and immense profiteering by financiers would heal all wounds and make everything better for everyone, even those at the bottom layer of the economy.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true. High finance and cheap credit have intensified structural problems such as rising inequality, not resolved them.

The implicit promise of the neoliberal project is that liberalizing private-sector markets and credit will magically grease the processes of growth and widespread prosperity.

When economies have the right systems in place–decentralized, somewhat free markets, an entrepreneurial spirit, many unmet needs, idle productive capacity and a credit-starved real economy–freeing up static markets and credit can unleash the productive capacity of the bottom level of the economy.

But in economies dominated by state/private monopolies and cartels, neoliberalism simply funnels the profits of financialization to the few at the expense of the many, and at the cost of heightened instability and insecurity. Continue reading