Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ-Life Links (072506)

Free Links:

• Pundit Review had Pat Dollard on Sunday evening — Dollard has been in Iraq for eight months, is showing videos at his site, and ultimately plans to release a movie, tentatively called “Young Americans,” portraying the realities there on the ground. Full audio of this tremendous interview is here. If you’re pressed for time, please, at least listen to this two-minute call into the show from a military mom and wife.
• I can’t help but wonder how many people in these crowds would still tell pollsters we’re still in a recession:
  

  Ticket sales have concert promoters singing out

  Looks like concertgoers aren’t so intimidated by high ticket prices after all.

  With splashy tours from Madonna, the Rolling Stones and Billy Joel as lures, fans paid an average price of $58.11 per seat in the first half of 2006, up 15.6% from the first half of 2005, according to concert trade magazine Pollstar.

  Total ticket sales rose 20% to 17.4 million.

  Pollstar pegs total sales at more than $1 billion, up 38.5%, while the Billboard Box Score tallied sales at $990 million, up 24.6%. Either way, first-half revenue broke records.

  This is not an indicator of a shortage of discretionary income.

• I have very mixed feelings about StretchPay, which is a program Ohio credit unions are using to deliver the equivalent of lower-cost payday loans –
  

  Through StretchPay, credit union members can get a $250 revolving line of credit for a $35 annual fee, or a $500 line of credit for $70 a year, plus an annual percentage rate of 18 percent - rate more in line with traditional credit cards. The loans must be repaid within 30 days before another can be taken out.

  Payday lenders charge short-term interest rates that can translate to as much as 400 percent when annualized, the Ohio Credit Union League said.

  “You don’t have to pay the kind of interest that you do going to payday lenders,” said Dick Maslyk, CEO of the $75 million-asset MidState Educators Credit Union, a founding member of Credit Union Outreach.

  ….. To obtain a StretchPay loan, a recipient must be a credit union member in good standing for at least 60 days - a factor that is likely to reduce some of the risk for credit unions, Burke said. Other requirements include having a proven source of income.

  But the program doesn’t generally deny StretchPay applicants based on credit scores, which helps differentiate the program from banks, Burke said.

  The goal is to offer lower interest rates while credit union lending officers provide financial counseling to help members get to a point where they no longer need to obtain short-term loans, Maslyk said.

  Do the math on these “deals,” treating the annual fee as part of the finance charges, and the interest rate is 32% or more. Yes, it’s a better deal than any payday lender would provide, but I’m concerned that some credit unions will get so used to the income they are receiving that they will slack off on the education.

• AOL Founder Steve Case said he is “sorry” for the 2001 Time Warner merger — Not half as sorry as Time Warner shareholders.
• Borderline Insanity? No. Intellectual Dishonesty? Yes — The “Borderline Insanity” that John Fund thinks he is referring to in his OpinionJournal.com column yesterday is the supposed “enforcement only” approach to immigration embodied in the Immigration Bill passed by the House earlier this year. The trouble is that “enforcement only” is a gross mischaracterization of what was passed. It’s all about “enforcement first,” and Fund knows it. He clearly knows better, and is indeed being intellectually dishonest.