Karen Blumenthal has an excellent column, In the Fight Against Bill Creep, Every Extra Fee Is the Enemy (pd. subs. req'd), in today's WSJ where she notes that add-on a la carte service fees are offsetting modest increases in basic costs of services.

Consider your cellphone, for instance. A typical month of local service today now costs about $48.50, about a dollar a month less than in 2003, and you get about 60% more minutes, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, the industry's trade group. But the harsh reality is that the typical bill is more like $76 a month, says TNS, a New York-based market-research firm. The reason? Families keep adding phones and minutes and a slew of additional services, such as text messaging, ringtones and games.[...] Basic cable costs have climbed about 20% since 2003, to about $44.28 a month, according to research firm SNL Kagan. But factor in Internet access, extra channels like HBO or regional sports, and a digital video recorder, and the average monthly bill is more like $98, up 63% since 2003. Health clubs are another area where people have added services.

SEIU has launched a campaign to "fire Ken Lewis," Bank of America chief. Thursday is a national day of action.

Bank of America tellers make about $24,000 a year. That's less than what the CEO of a company bought by Bank of America paid for his curtains during the $1.2 million redecoration of his personal office.[...] News reports say that Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis turned a blind eye when one of his new acquisitions doled out billions in executive pay in 2008 - including an estimated $4 billion in bonuses right before the company got its $10 billion bailout from the government.

Following widespread reporting (Associated Press via Business Week, New York Times) over the weekend that banks on the taxpayer dole had increased their lobbying to get more taxpayer cash to do who knows what with (anything but make loans to boost the economy!), new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who dodged his own ethical bullets to get confirmed, has announced:

(Washington Post) new guidelines yesterday aimed at eliminating the influence of lobbyists on the $700 billion financial bailout program by restricting their contact with officials who are reviewing applications for money and deciding how to disburse it.

Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center has a new report on an old problem: credit bureaus and their lack of accuracy. The report (here is the release) is called Automated Injustice: How a Mechanized Dispute System Frustrates Consumers Seeking to Fix Errors in Their Credit Reports. Here's a summary of the Automated Injustice report's findings:

Some of the issues discussed in this report include how credit bureaus:

Our latest report on credit bureau errors -- Mistakes Do Happen -- is a few years old but identifies some of the same issues.

Below the jump, I've posted a timeline worth looking at: A DECADE OF WEAKENING FINANCIAL REGULATION. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, attached it to his excellent opening statement at a full U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing last week called "Where Were the Watchdogs? The Financial Crisis and the Breakdown of Financial Governance."

A DECADE OF WEAKENING FINANCIAL REGULATION
Oct. 1998 At the request of the SEC, Treasury, and Federal Reserve, Congress blocks funding for any CFTC regulation of over-the-counter derivatives.
Nov. 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repeals 1933 Glass-Steagall wall separating banks, broker-dealers, and insurers.
Dec. 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act prohibits swaps regulation and opens Enron loophole allowing unregulated energy markets for large traders.
Aug. 2003 SEC delays requiring auditors of private broker-dealers to register with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
Oct. 2003 SEC proposes but never adopts rule on shareholder nominations of directors.
June 2004 SEC weakens net capital rule for securities firms.
June 2006 Court of Appeals invalidates SEC regulation requiring hedge fund registration.
Jan. 2007 SEC and bank regulators weaken guidance for oversight of complex structured finance products.
July 2007 SEC eliminates 1938 uptick rule that had put certain limits on short stock sales.
Dec. 2007 SEC allows foreign companies trading on U.S. exchanges to use international financial reporting standards without a reconciliation to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
Jan. 2008 Supreme Court issues Stoneridge decision barring shareholder suits against third parties that help public companies commit fraud.

Prepared by Senator Levin
January 2009

The Center for Progressive Reform is a think-tank of law professors and other university-affiliated scholars who promote sensible safeguards "to protect health, safety, and the environment through analysis and commentary." They've got two important new books on the importance of preserving state laws and state common law against the intense corporate pressure to preempt them. From the CPR blog:

Thomas McGarity has written The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries, published by Yale University Press. William Buzbee has edited Preemption Choice: The Theory, Law, and Reality of Federalism's Core Question, published by Cambridge University Press and featuring chapter contributions from 15 experts, including Buzbee and McGarity, as well as a number of other CPR Member Scholars.

Over at Smartmoney.com, reporter Aleksandra Todorova has a story I'd agree with even if I weren't quoted in it: Credit-Monitoring Services: A False Sense of Security. Credit monitoring is over-priced, doesn't stop identity theft and provides that "false sense of security." In fact, Maxine Sweet from Experian is even quoted saying this:

"Experian’s credit-monitoring service provides “peace of mind” and should not be counted on to prevent identity theft alone."

MASSPIRG testified this month that proposed regulations implementing an important new state law limiting drug company gifts to doctors and requiring disclosure of payments to doctors:

"do not adequately protect Massachusetts consumers.[...] The proposed regulations do not provide sufficient relief from the distortions caused by industry marketing practices that continue to drive up health care costs in Massachusetts and across the country."

Interesting story from Chris Soghoian over at his CNET Surveillance State column: White House quietly exempts YouTube from federal Web privacy rules. The story points out that Youtube has been exempted from an otherwise government-wide ban on websites using long-term tracking cookies.

While the White House might not be tracking visitors, the Google owned video sharing site is free to use persistent cookies to track the browsing behavior of millions of visitors to Obama's home in cyberspace. No other company has been singled out and rewarded with such a waiver.

Today's Washington Post has a page one above-the-fold story by Binyamin Appelbaum titled By Switching Their Charters, Banks Skirt Supervision. The story explains that regulated banks and S&Ls can routinely switch their charters from state to federal or federal to state, or from bank to S&L and back, so that they can take advantage of the coziest relationship with the regulator least likely to care about enforcing the law. This forum shopping precipitates a race-to-the-regulatory-bottom where no regulator steps up. The problem is exacerbated by the unbelievable fact that the state and federal bank regulatory apparatus is funded by fee assessments paid directly to regulators, with little if any legislative oversight of budgets or activities even allowed. Federal regulators seeking larger fiefdoms on the Potomac, such as the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, loosen their rules so more banks will join their country clubs and they'll have bigger budgets. The story's angle is that banks are switching to state charters to avoid federal oversight. I would argue strongly that while some of these probably smaller institutions may have escaped likely light enforcement actions by the weak hand of OCC or OTS, that neither OCC or OTS are aggressive regulators by any definition. Neither ever punishes a big bank or provides a "message" action that warns other institutions to walk the straight and narrow. Instead, both fit the classic "captured regulator" model and their lack of actions have contributed to the run-up of this crisis. Eliminating state regulators in their favor is not the answer.

Any financial reform in the wake of the Wall Street bailout needs to both limit charter-switching and decouple regulatory fee assessments from empire-building by adding expansive Congressional oversight of regulators. We have numerous federal programs funded by user fees. That's not the problem.

The problem is that I can think of no such user fee program that is so corrupt and leads to such poor policy outcomes as the banking system. More can and must be done. For example, just a few years ago, the Congress reauthorized the FDA's Prescription Drug User Fee Act to limit Big Pharma's historic influence and abuse of that program. For years, flaws in that program had allowed big drug companies to essentially control FDA's oversight of their drug introductions and kept FDA from adequately conducting post-market reviews of safety. FDA became a unit of Big Pharma, with too many of its resources allocated to rubber-stamping new drug introductions and too few inspectors policing the marketplace. If Congress can rein in the drug boys, they can rein in the bankers and their so-called regulators.

Our colleagues Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America and Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center have issued their latest warning to consumers: avoid triple-digit ripoff tax refund anticipation loans and their variant, paystub loans. A longer CFA/NCLC report will be out in February. From yesterday's release:

How much will taxpayers pay if they get a quickie tax loan? The price of a RAL includes several components –

A loan fee ranging from $34 to $130, which is usually broken down into a “Refund Account” fee and a “Bank Fee.”

Some tax preparers may charge one or more separate add-on fees, sometimes called “application,” “administrative,” “e-filing,” “service bureau,” “transmission,” or “processing” fees. Add-on fees can range from $25 to several hundred dollars. Add-on fees are not charged by H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt or Liberty Tax. In general, the effective annual interest rate (APR) for a RAL can range from about 50% to nearly 500%. If a $40 add-on fee is charged and included in the calculation, the effective APRs range from about 85% to nearly 1,300%. RAL loan fees can vary significantly.

In good tax news, another related ripoff, paying private contractors a huge fee for the privilege of filing your tax return electronically, has been reduced. Now, taxpayers who make up to $56,000 can file free (USA Today story by Sandy Block; IRS site; our 2007 "some Free File fixes" blog) The so-called Free File program is still an outrageous subsidy to powerful corporations who are allowed to advertise through the IRS website and of course, use tricks and traps to add on other fees and "services." Even the Americans making less than $56,000 should watch out for these add-ons if they use "Free" File through an IRS tax preparation "partner" company. Let's hope Obama dumps the rest of this distasteful corporate welfare program into the trash for next tax season. Advertising on government websites? Private firms charging fees to file your taxes?

Over at his Zero Day Threat book blog, USA Today tech reporter Byron Acohido rips the Heartland payment processor for the lack of transparency about its massive security breach (my previous blog) involving 100 million or more credit and debit card numbers. From Byron:

Once again, we have a case where more transparency would clearly serve the greater good of making the Internet incrementally safer. Instead, what appears to be unfolding is yet another demonstration of plausible deniability by the centrally involved financial institutions, as each tries to dodge liability.

Well, it isn't Friday afternoon and it isn't Christmas Eve. Those bad news days happen every year, Fridays more than once, and were routinely used by the Bush Administration to bury announcements. Today, on the much-less-common and much tougher news day, President Barack Obama's Inauguration Day, the payments processor Heartland decided to report that over the last year it may have suffered the largest data breach in history, over 100 million credit and debit card numbers. The numbers were collected over time through a piece of malicious tracking software added to the firm's computers. Brian Krebs at the Washington Post has more in Payment Processor Breach May Be Largest Ever.

Here are a few photos from the introduction of Rep. Carolyn Maloney's Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights bill last week (previous blog). At top left, from left, me, Pam Banks of Consumers Union, and Ruth Susswein of Consumer Action then in foreground Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) (with Todd McCracken of National Small Business Association in back of the Senators). In the lower shot of Rep. Maloney speaking, that's me and Pam at left again, and Caleb Gibson of Demos and Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America to the right. According to the article Obama supports credit card reform in the NY Consumer Affairs Examiner, President Obama will sign the Maloney bill. After the jump are some more photos.

Senator Mark Udall speaks, upper left. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY joins Carolyn Maloney in the next one at right. Finally, at bottom, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) joins Rep. Maloney. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) also spoke but only after my photographer had to leave.

The GAO has released a withering report describing how America's most powerful corporations, including many federal contractors and numerous banks on the TARP taxpayer dole, hide income in tax haven countries. While this appears to most disinterested observers to be a stellar way to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, the report International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions lists a variety of reasons for the practice and does not draw conclusions. Nevertheless, one of its Congressional requesters, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), stated in the Washington Post:

"This is kind of like economic patriotism," Dorgan said. "Americans were told you have to pony up some money to help these companies. And it's rather infuriating for them to find out now that those companies, when they were profitable, didn't want to pay taxes and found clever ways to hide their money overseas."

It is all legal, but it could come to an end, given the dire condition of the U.S. economy and President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to close this popular business tax loophole. The Treasury estimates that it loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue as a result of companies shipping their income off shore, and congressional leaders are vowing to introduce legislation forcing big companies to pay full freight.

“This report shows that some of our country’s largest companies and federal contractors, many of which are household names, continue to use offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of taxes to the U.S. And, some of those companies have even received emergency economic funds from the government,” said Senator Dorgan. “I think we should take action to shut down these tax dodgers and we will be introducing legislation to do just that.”

This week the European Union found Microsoft, a recidivist monopolist, had violated its competition laws. The EU ordered Microsoft to untie Internet Explorer from the operating system Windows (previous blog). Washington Post Microsoft Loses E.U. Antitrust Case. We have joined the Consumer Federation of America in a number of activities (2004 court filing) urging greater U.S. sanctions against Microsoft. In 1999, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued the following, astonishing Findings of Fact in U.S. v. Microsoft.

412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest.

Update: The award to Diane is from last year. The paper does say "last month."

In today's Arizona Republic, the story Gilbert woman takes aim at boosting local voter turnout quotes long-time PIRG staffer Diane Brown, founding director of Arizona PIRG, and points out that she recently won the Arizona league's "'Dangerous Woman Award' that goes to a member who makes an impact in the community." We are not surprised.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review an important case that would determine whether rules issued by the obscure but powerful national bank regulator, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), overstepped its authority by preventing states from enforcing their own laws that even OCC admits still apply to national banks. We are amici for the states (previous blog) in Cuomo v. Clearinghouse Association and OCC. From the New York Times story High Court to Rule on State Inquiries on Banks by Adam Liptak:

The case arose from a 2005 inquiry by Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, into possible racial discrimination in the real estate lending of Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Mr. Spitzer said that information made public by the banks suggested that a much higher percentage of black and Hispanic borrowers were charged higher rates than white borrowers.

We joined U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) yesterday at a news conference (her release) announcing the re-introduction of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights (our release). Also appearing, with consumer, labor and civil rights groups, were Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mark Udall (D-CO). My full statement is pasted after the jump:

Statement of U.S. PIRG Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski
Introduction of Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights
15 January 2009
2200 Rayburn HOB

“U.S. PIRG is pleased to again join Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who championed her Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights through the House last year on an overwhelming 312-112 vote. We are pleased Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are pushing reform in the Senate.

The Maloney bill makes many of the worst credit card practices, including hair trigger punitive rate increases on existing balances for consumers who are as little as one hour late, illegal.

Last month, the Fed and other regulators did a cruel disservice to consumers when they announced but then postponed their own similar credit card reforms until the middle of 2010. The Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights takes effect just 90 days after passage.

Just as the economy needs a recovery package now, consumers need protection from unfair credit card practices now.

We expected the Fed to be a new sheriff in town to police the credit card marketplace, instead we got the fed playing keystone kops by identifying serious corporate crime and then letting it continue.

U.S. PIRG will work to pass the strongest possible credit card reforms in this Congress. In addition to passing the Maloney Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights into law as soon as possible, we need to also ban binding mandatory arbitration in credit card contracts, lower outrageous interest rates, stop banks from raising interest rates for no reason and protect college students from unfair marketing practices.
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U.S. PIRG serves as the federation of non-profit, non-partisan state Public Interest Research Groups, which take on powerful interests on behalf of their members. Our main website is uspirg.org and our campus credit card reform campaign is at truthaboutcredit.org.

On behalf of President-elect Obama, economics advisor Larry Summers has sent Congressional leaders a letter urging better TARP oversight as a condition of the new administration's support for releasing the second half of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. One of the wackier findings of the reports from the Congressional TARP oversight panel chaired by Professor Elizabeth Warren is that the Bush Treasury Department doesn't have and never had a plan for tracking bank use of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money it's been giving out in big chunks. Findings of the January 9th report:

The report highlights four key areas that demand special attention:

1. Bank Accountability—the Panel still does not know what banks are doing with the taxpayer money they have received.
2. Transparency—confidence in markets can only be restored when information is transparent and reliable, but we still have no clear mechanism to ensure transparent and accurate asset valuation and no confidence that the dangers posed by toxic assets have been addressed.
3. Foreclosures—Treasury has yet to take any steps to use TARP funds or develop plans to “maximize assistance to homeowners,” as required by law.
4. Overall Strategy—Treasury's shifting explanations for its purposes and the tools used have exacerbated the Panel's concern that Treasury does not have a coherent overall strategy and goals for use of the TARP funds.

Today, along with my colleague Nicole Allen, who coordinates our maketextbooksaffordable.org campaign, I am speaking today at a TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD.org) conference called Patents, Copyrights and Knowledge Governance: The Next Four Years. It's on ways to spur innovation while making the copyright and patent system fairer. As Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz told conferees yesterday, there are a variety of alternatives to the current system, which not only enriches monopolists, but creates both static and dynamic inefficiencies in the market that delay or halt the spread of new ideas and products. My workshop is on the use of prizes (you may have heard of the X-Prize) to encourage innovation. Last year, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced legislation to establish a medical innovation prize. We also believe prizes could spur the development of open source educational resources. More on prizes from KEI. My previous blog.

Along with Jeff Chester's Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG will file an amended complaint (here is the release) to the FTC on mobile privacy. As the Internet, and its advertisers, have migrated to cell phones with locational tracking, privacy rules have not kept pace. From the Washington Post story Online Privacy Decisions Confront Obama by Kim Hart:

Separately, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said they plan to file a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission, urging the agency to investigate mobile marketing practices that may threaten consumer privacy.[...] the Center for Digital Democracy and U.S. PIRG are asking the FTC to examine the practices of companies such as Bango, which analyzes mobile audiences, and AdMob, a mobile advertising network, for using "unfair marketing tactics" that do not adequately inform consumers about how personal information is used. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said mobile customers are particularly vulnerable to ads for new loans, refinancing deals or new credit cards in the uncertain economy. Most devices can track a user's location, which advertisers can leverage for marketing purposes.

“Policies governing consumer privacy on the mobile Web have failed to keep pace with these new marketing practices,” observed Ed Mierzwinski, director of consumer protection for USPIRG. “Most critically, as the user’s location has become part of the data collection and targeting process, the ‘mobile marketing ecosystem’--as the industry calls it--poses serious new threats to consumer privacy.”

The new complaint examines five key aspects of mobile marketing: behavioral targeting, location-based targeting, user tracking/mobile analytics, audience segmentation, and data mining. Through an analysis of industry marketing data and other sources, it offers a revealing--and disturbing--examination of an industry that provides mobile communications services to 267 million Americans. Mobile marketers are building profiles of these users so they can be targeted for advertising based on their behavior and their current location.

“We are well aware of the important role mobile communications are playing in our society, from politics to shopping,” explained Mierzwinski. “Increasingly, consumers and citizens will use their mobile devices as essential tools to engage in sensitive financial, medical, and purchasing transactions. But the growth of mobile communications must be accompanied by meaningful consumer privacy and marketing policies. That’s why the FTC must quickly act.”

UPDATE: Obama supports DTV delay (Washington Post)

In a letter sent to Capitol Hill this afternoon, and obtained by The Washington Post, the transition team said congressional action is needed. The action would be the "first step" toward helping consumers get ready for the transition to digital television. It also called funds provided to support the conversion "woefully inadequate."

Original post: Yesterday, the Consumers Union urged Congress to delay the long-scheduled February 17th switch to digital television. We support the CU demand. On that date, all over-the-air analog TVs (older, non-digital TVs with antennae; no cable, no satellite service) go dark unless they have digital converter boxes. Since the digital switch is generating some $19 billion in revenue to the government from spectrum sales, Congress agreed to at least provide $40 coupons to subsidize the cost of converter boxes, since the consumers whose TVs would become obsolete had done no wrong. But the program has been beleaguered and mismanaged from the start, was never fully funded and is now out of money (at least temporarily) and is hugely backlogged. In addition, although I haven't seen any studies, there appears to be little competition in the converter box market, so most consumers are still out of pocket up to $40 after the coupon. Previous blog on our February 2008 report Mixed Signals.

UPDATE: THE CPSC RELEASE: Excerpt:

Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards. The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold.

ORIGINAL POST: The CPSC is expected to issue a release today in response to a growing number of complaints from small toymakers and second-hand and consignment stores that it has failed to explain how to comply with new limits on lead in toys and children's products that take effect on 10 February. Yesterday, U.S. PIRG and other leading groups sent a letter to the CPSC demanding clarification. Austin American-Statesman story today. NBC17 (Durham, NC) with video. Los Angeles Times story. Our previous blog. While some elements of the toy industry campaign appear responsible and seeking clarification, some opponents of the important new law are using hysteria to rev up the issue, referring to 10 February as "National Bankruptcy Day" and the need to stop the new "supercharged" CPSC's "toy police." Excerpt from our consumer letter:

The vacuum of implementation information, as well as the proliferation of misinformation regarding actual testing requirements and the cost of testing is leading to confusion and fear. The public counts on the CPSC to protect them from dangerous products. Now CPSC must take the initiative to allay their fears by providing prompt, common-sense, and explicit interpretations regarding exemptions to CPSIA stipulations, guidance as to the realistic cost of testing, and education regarding compliance with the CPSIA for retailers, including thrift and consignment stores.

We are participating in two important upcoming DC conferences that are free and open to the public. Click below to find out how to register.

In today's editorial A Voice for the Consumer, the New York Times backs the recent call by U.S. PIRG, the Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and other leading groups to restore the long dormant White House Office of Consumer Affairs. From the NYT:

The time has come to give the American consumer a much stronger voice in Washington. President-elect Barack Obama has already named what amounts to an energy and environmental czar in the White House, and America’s beleaguered consumers deserve no less.[...] Presidents Johnson and Carter both recognized the need for a strong person to do that job. Both chose Esther Peterson, who during about eight years in office pushed for then-radical ideas like nutritional labeling on food and truth in advertising. As the Reagan anti-government era began, the consumer protection job steadily lost clout until it was shuttered in the late 1990s.

Read the details here:
1. Restore the United States Office of Consumer Affairs; Put a Consumer “Czar” In The White House.
2. Rein in Wall Street Excesses, Protect Consumers from Abusive and Predatory Lending.
3. Protect Consumers from Price-Gouging in Oil, Gas and Electricity Markets, and Take Steps To Provide Households With Access to Alternative Energy and Efficiency.
4. Improve Consumer Access to Justice By Reinstating Legal Rights.
5. Guarantee Safe, High Quality, Affordable Healthcare for Everyone.
6. Ensure our Food and Products are Safe.

In today's New York Times, in the latest in its Debt Trap series, Jonathan Glater reports on the Unspoken Link Between Credit Cards and Colleges. The story includes a video.

The New York Times obtained information about and, in some cases, copies of contracts between lenders, public colleges and their alumni associations using open records requests. [...] While most universities contacted for this article did not provide detailed financial information on the contracts — the University of Pittsburgh, for example, confirmed only that it had an agreement — two did share numbers. The alumni association of the University of Michigan is guaranteed $25.5 million over the term of its 11-year agreement with Bank of America. Under the agreement, the association agreed to provide lists of names and addresses of students, alumni, faculty, staff, donors and holders of season tickets to athletic events.