Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ-Life Links (061206)

Free Links:

• This may be an indication that consumers have less money to buy things with, but I don’t think so — The monthly payment ratio, the percentage of total balances the average credit-card user pays, has gone up a few points in the past several months, as higher minimum-payment requirements have started to kick in, and as those who are smart enough and able to pay more do so in response to higher interest rates.

  

  I think it will take a much higher ratio to cause a negative impact at the cash register. And of course, if enough people pay their debts down significantly, they will have a LOT more money to go out and buy stuff without creating more debt.

• On the war/Katrina relief supplement spending bill — I think the blogosphere deserves an assist on the elimination of the most of the pork, and of the unconscionable across-the-board “cutting” idea hatched in the Senate. The $94.5 billion measure is going to reach the President’s desk in nearly clean condition. But Captain Ed, Instapundit, and others are kidding themselves if they think Tom “There’s nowhere else to cut” Delay would have held as firm as Majority Leader John Boehner did. Sorry, folks; the Internet pressure was good, but Boehner deserves the lion’s (or elephant’s) share of the credit.
• This does seem like working overtime to alienate your customers (HT Techdirt) — AOL recently started to display ads along with e-mail messages to its paying subscribers.
• One of the most arrogant and underperforming companies on earth outdid itself at it annual meeting, and the seething hasn’t stopped:

  Weeks after Home Depot Inc.’s annual meeting, which featured no questions, no vote counts and no outside directors in attendance, shareholders of the nation’s largest home improvement chain are still seething.
  Home Depot has apologized, but its tone-deaf approach to its critics may boomerang.
  “You didn’t hear anything close to the level of anger being discussed about Home Depot before the meeting that you did after,” said Patrick McGurn, executive vice president at proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc.
  If you missed the May 25 annual meeting in Wilmington, Del., here’s what happened: The only director who attended was Bob Nardelli, the company’s chairman, president and CEO. Nardelli refused to acknowledge comments, answer questions or stick around longer than 30 minutes.
  The company allowed shareholders to speak about their proposals, but it put a strict time limit on their comments, which were tracked by a giant clock.
  Shareholder activists had been planning to ask directors tough questions about Nardelli’s pay package, which totaled $123.7 million, excluding stock option grants, over the past five years. Nardelli was awarded the money while Home Depot’s stock sunk about 9 percent. In the same period, stock in its nearest rival, Lowe’s Companies Inc., increased 185 percent on a split-adjusted basis.
  ….. “I’m getting tons of calls,” said Richard Ferlauto, director of pension and benefit policy at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and a critic of Home Depot’s corporate governance.
  The callers, he said, are individual shareholders who are outraged and “Home Depot employees who say Nardelli runs the company internally the same way he ran the annual meeting.”

  Biz Week had an astoundingly fluffy cover story (probably requires subscription) on Home Depot in March which brought a torrent of reader criticism for whitewashing. Home Depot is run by Nardelli and his cronies, for Nardelli and his cronies. Trust me, folks; what’s making the papers about Home Depot only scratches the surface.