Money & Computing

The Federal Reserve's new rules for credit card companies mean new credit card protections for you. Here are some key changes you should expect from your credit card company beginning on February 22, 2010.

What your credit card company has to tell you

• When they plan to increase your rate or other fees. Your credit card company must send you a notice 45 days before they can increase your interest rate;
• change certain fees (such as annual fees, cash advance fees, and late fees) that apply to your account; or
• make other significant changes to the terms of your card.

If your credit card company is going to make changes to the terms of your card, it must give you the option to cancel the card before certain fee increases take effect. If you take that option, however, your credit card company may close your account and increase your monthly payment, subject to certain limitations.

For example, they can require you to pay the balance off in five years, or they can double the percentage of your balance used to calculate your minimum payment (which will result in faster repayment than under the terms of your account). The company does not have to send you a 45-day advance notice

• if you have a variable interest rate tied to an index; if the index goes up, the company does not have to provide notice before your rate goes up;
• your introductory rate expires and reverts to the previously disclosed "go-to" rate;
• your rate increases because you are in a workout agreement and you haven’t made your payments as agreed.

How long it will take to pay off your balance. Your monthly credit card bill will include information on how long it will take you to pay off your balance if you only make minimum payments. It will also tell you how much you would need to pay each month in order to pay off your balance in three years. For example, suppose you owe $3,000 and your interest rate is 14.4% -- your bill might look like this:

New Balance:   $3,000.00

Minimum payment due:   $90.00

Payment due date:   4/20/12

Late Payment Warning:  If we do not receive your minimum payment by the date  listed above, you may have to pay a $35 late fee and your APRs may be  increased  up to the Penalty APR of 28.99%.

Minimum Payment Warning: If you make only the minimum payment each period, you will pay more in interest and it will take you longer to pay off your balance.

New rules regarding rates, fees, and limits

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"Among the issues addressed in the survey was the provocative question raised by eminent tech scholar Nicholas Carr in a cover story for the Atlantic Monthly magazine in the summer of 2009:  'Is Google Making us Stupid?'  Carr argued that the ease of online searching and distractions of browsing through the web were possibly limiting his capacity to concentrate. 'I'm not thinking the way I used to,' he wrote, in part because he is becoming a skimming, browsing reader, rather than a deep and engaged reader. 'The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas ....  If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,' we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.'

Respondents were also asked to "share your view of the internet's influence on the future of human intelligence in 2020 — what is likely to stay the same and what will be different in the way human intellect evolves?" What follows is a selection of the hundreds of written elaborations and some of the recurring themes in those answers:

Nicholas Carr and Google staffers have their say:

• "I feel compelled to agree with myself. But I would add that the Net's effect on our intellectual lives will not be measured simply by average IQ scores. What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information

• "My conclusion is that when the only information on a topic is a handful of essays or books, the best strategy is to read these works with total concentration. But when you have access to thousands of articles, blogs, videos, and people with expertise on the topic, a good strategy is to skim first to get an overview. Skimming and concentrating can and should coexist. I would also like to say that Carr has it mostly backwards when he says that Google is built on the principles of Taylorism [the institution of time-management and worker-activity standards in industrial settings]. Taylorism shifts responsibility from worker to management, institutes a standard method for each job, and selects workers with skills unique for a specific job. Google does the opposite, shifting responsibility from management to the worker, encouraging creativity in each job, and encouraging workers to shift among many different roles in their career .... Carr is of course right that Google thrives on understanding data. But making sense of data (both for Google internally and for its users) is not like building the same artifact over and over on an assembly line; rather it requires creativity, a mix of broad and deep knowledge, and a host of connections to other people. That is what Google is trying to facilitate." — Peter Norvig, Google Research Director

• "Google will make us more informed. The smartest person in the world could well be behind a plow in China or India. Providing universal access to information will allow such people to realize their full potential, providing benefits to the entire world." — Hal Varian, Google, chief economist

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The new CBS reality show, Undercover Boss brings back memories of a college President who, while on leave in 1977, took a job, not on Haverford's College's campus, but as as a garbageman or as it's termed today, a waste collector.

Coleman's background didn't presage this experiment, as People Magazine outlines his background when introducing his story: "John Royston Coleman, 55, is a Ph.D. in economics, an ex-lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy and a former executive of the Ford Foundation. He is also chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank."

His job-switch wasn't the only innovative decision in his career at Haverford:

"As the ’60s ended, Haverford students did express a favorable opinion of 'co-education' in the form of a student exchange with other women’s colleges. Sixteen women from Smith, Vassar and Sarah Lawrence arrived in the fall of 1969; of those, six loved the College so much they petitioned then-president Jack Coleman to let them remain after their exchange year had ended. They went on to earn bachelor’s degrees in 1972."

"These events prompted Coleman — a strong advocate of co-education — to appoint a Commission on Women, headed by Dean of Admissions Bill Ambler, to once again explore the idea; in a 50-page report, the commission concluded that the admission of women would “enhance the possibilities” of Haverford’s realizing “its educational goals.” However, the Board rejected full co-education in 1974, instead opting to strengthen Haverford’s relationship with Bryn Mawr by allowing students to live, major, and take classes at either school."

Since those events, Mr. Coleman, who admits he's rarely stayed at the same job for more than 10 years, has been an innkeeper and newspaper owner in New England.

But back to the new CBS show: "Each week a different executive will leave the comfort of their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their company. While working alongside their employees, they will see the effects their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organization and get an up-close look at both the good and the bad while discovering the unsung heroes who make their company run."

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From The Center for American Progess report:

"As a result, professional women who need hours more like a traditional full-time job of 40 hours a week often find themselves 'doing scut work at slave wages,' as one professional woman put it.  This systematic de-skilling of women who work part time — as one in five professional and middle-income mothers do, according to our data analysis — is a major macroeconomic cost of workforce-workplace mismatch. So is underemployment of low-income mothers, who face wage rates so low that it makes little economic sense for them to work; a lack of subsidies for childcare often leads to the perverse situation where a mother’s take home pay is less than childcare costs."

"The Economist offers a sober assessment of the macroeconomic consequences of the resulting loss of women’s human capital. The magazine warns that many women 'are still excluded from paid work; many do not make best use of their skills. Greater participation by women in the labor market could help offset the effect of an ageing, shrinking population and hence support growth.' "

"Designing workplaces around the old fashioned breadwinner-homemaker household has microeconomic consequences as well. Individual employers may think, in good faith, that they need to work employees longer and longer hours in order to remain competitive. But that conclusion reflects confusion between the inevitable costs of doing business and the costs associated with a specific, and outdated, business model."

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