Couldn’t Help But Notice (062107)

From the “Careful What You Wish For” Department — Those who think they stopped Wal-Mart from expanding its presence in the banking business by intimidating the FDIC were, as predicted, badly mistaken:

Wal-Mart on Wednesday announced that it will expand its in-store “MoneyCenters” to about 1,000 locations by 2008.

These MoneyCenters will offer customers access to low-cost services such as check cashing, money orders and money transfers.

Wal-Mart already operates 225 MoneyCenters and expects to more than double that number to cover a quarter of its stores by the end of 2008.

Underscoring its push into financial services, Wal-Mart is broadening its menu of financial products and services, beginning with the launch of the Wal-Mart MoneyCard, a reloadable prepaid Visa rolling out nationally with GE Money and Green Dot.

Wal-Mart said it expects the low-cost money services will “help meet the needs of the millions of [its] unbanked and underserved customers.”

Surely the Moneycenters’ services will expand beyond those indicated, under what is likely a less stringent regulatory framework. Maybe the company should send a thank-you note to those who stopped it at the FDIC. If it were anyone but Wal-Mart, those same activists would be sending thank-yous to the company for lowering costs to the unbanked. Instead, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re back in a couple of years accusing it of gouging.

___________________________________

Shelly Lombard thinks Ford may be facing intermediate-term bankruptcy:

The only way for Ford to get there (to profitability) is through major concessions from The United Auto Workers union, Ms. Lombard wrote in a report.

“Without such changes we believe bankruptcy or some type of out-of-court restructuring may be inevitable, though not immediate of course since Ford has enough liquidity to last until 2012 or so, even at the current cash burn rate.”

Burn rate? I haven’t seen that term since the dot-com era.

I’m going to suggest that all the UAW concessions in the world may not save Ford if the company doesn’t deal with the American Family Association boycott (713,000 and counting).

___________________________________

MLB can’t really stand for Major League Baseball, it has to mean Men Loony as Bats (the flying ones):

• It’s trying to claim that watching a game you paid for on a Slingbox is illegal.
• And MLB is still harassing fantasy leagues because they think they own the facts and other common items associated with the game, such as player names, stats, team logos, and the like (covered last year here [3rd item] and here [4th item]).

Keep it up, guys, and you’ll become the new NFL (No Fan League).

_____________________________________

Driving trucks no one else will drive?

An author and investigative journalist believes that, in an effort to ensure Mexican trucks will begin rolling across the U.S. on schedule, the Bush administration is pressing the Senate to not take action on a bill passed overwhelmingly in the House that essentially would block the project.

The issue is safety, or lack thereof, of the Mexican big rigs. Sorry — After the shenanigans over the simple concept of building a fence, I do not trust this administration to keep unsafe rigs off the roads.

____________________________________

Peggy Noonan’s column last week on the illegal immigration situation isn’t perfect, but it had a two-paragraph compassionately conservative recommendation that should not be ignored:

We should close the border, pause, absorb what we have, and set ourselves to “patriating” the newcomers who are here. The young of AmeriCorps might help teach them English. Those reaching retirement age, who happen to be the last people in America who were taught and know American history, could help them learn the story of our country. We could, as a nation, set our minds to this.

We shouldn’t be disheartened. So much good could be done once a Great Pause begins, once the alarm is abated.

I would amend that, as I’m sure Noonan would, to allow anyone legally going through the immigration process to continue to do so. In working through the backlog, new citizenships will still take place at the rate of roughly a million a year for at least a few years. But for her idea to really work, the diversity divisiveness crowd would just have to lead, follow, or get the heck out of the way. I wish I could claim to be optimistic about that.