There seems to be no credit crisis on the taxpayer dollar.
More of your tax dollars at work. A local TV station reports that AIG blew into town for another ‘conference’ at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort this week. According to the KNXV story:
AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property.
An AIG spokesperson said there were no AIG markers in order to minimize signage costs and to lower the company’s profile.
Source: AIG execs at posh Phoenix resort after $85 billion bailout
They did save around 40,000 bucks by canceling Terry Bradshaw, a retired football player booked as a motivational speaker. Using sport metaphors to motivate financial engineers is probably a really dumb idea.
Meanwhile on the ‘retail’ front, meaning folks like you and I, we seem to be deleveraging, or paying off and canceling credit cards, and paying cash for things. Over at the Monitor website is this story on how living within ones means is a bad idea. The ‘Catch 22′ of consumer credit
It is interesting to note that the article continues to beat the drum of using plastic, so as not to harm your FICO score, which is a record of whether or not you have credit cards, and how much you are using them.
Living withing a budget and paying for things as you can afford them is obviously bad for credit card companies, and Fair Issac, the company who computes credit scores. Here is an interesting bit of Financial Profiling:
“Credit adjustments are being based on a broader risk-management model,” says Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and consumer research for CreditCards.com. “Even if an individual consumer has had no problems of credit-payment deficiencies, if they shop where others who have had a history of default shop, then their credit lines will be reduced.”
Source CS Monitor
So kids, Remember Don’t Shop Where Deadbeats Shop!