When President Obama appeared at the House GOP retreat recently, he singled out Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the raking Republican on the House Budget Committee, as a Republican with serious ideas, although he disagrees with many of them.

Ryan asked the president if he could support a proposal he’s worked on with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., for a line item veto.

Their proposal would be constitutional, Ryan said, keeping the “power of the purse” with Congress but giving the president the tool to pull out pork from legislation.

“It’s not going to solve our entire fiscal problem, but it kind of goes at the culture of spending, and it embarrasses a lot of the pork out of the budget,” Ryan said.  “If (Nebraska Democratic Sen.) Ben Nelson knew that the “Cornhusker Kickback” that he got for his state and only his state might have to be voted on independently later by his peers, he might not ask for it in the first place.  And, so that’s kind of the chilling effect on a lot of the waste and a lot of the deal cutting that’s going on around here that we think our deal will achieve.”

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It has been a tale of two unemployment crises.

Although the national unemployment rate dropped slightly last month to 9.7%, a new study suggests that not only have low-income workers been the hardest hit by the jobs crisis — but there has been “no labor maket recession for America’s affluent.”

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Customers of the largest banks in the country are the least likely to believe their financial institution does what’s best for them as opposed to what’s best for the bottom line, according to a report from Forrester Research.

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The nation’s employers reduced their payrolls by 20K last month, generating fresh anxiety about a work market that has yet to catch up with growth in the economy on a grand scale.

The reduction was worse than the 15K jobs economists were expecting.  The nation’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% from the 10% level of a month ago.

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I was thinking about domains and Bank of America, and started typing in a few urls. I typed  www. bankofamericasucks.com and it was taken, obviously.  The owner remains annonomous. I typed www. BofAsucks.com and guess who owns it,  Bank of America owns it.  They were the first to figure it out, obviously, so they bought the domain.  Go to GoDaddy.com and see for yourself. I typed www. BofAhelp.com  To my amazement, no one owned it! Not even the helpfull people at BofA, yea right.  Now wouldn’t you think with as many people that are in trouble and need help with their mortgages and credit card debt, that BofA would have purchased this little domain so maybe someone could reach them for help. Wrong. I guess they just don’t want to be contacted at all unless you want to get a credit card, borrow money, or make a payment.  Maybe they were too busy getting their million dollar bonuses to worry about another little domain, afterall, they already bought the important one, right? www. BofAsucks.com.  So I annied up the $7.17 and purchased the domain, just to prove the point that BofA thinks way more about sucking something out of us than they do about helping anyone at all. Their choice of purchasing domains clearly proves this.  Now, where shall i point this domain? Any Ideas? LOL…

Americans with overdue debts run a gauntlet.  First come the letters.  Then the phone calls.  And consumers end up in court, sued by collectors who hope that a favorable judgment will allow them to garnish wages or seize assets.

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As awful as it is to lose your home, it’s at least a relief to put your largest financial strain behind you, right?

Wrong.

Former homeowners may remain obligated if there’s a difference between what they owed on their mortgage and what the bank could auction it off for.  And these “deficiency judgments” are time bombs that can go off years after borrowers lose their houses.

It can even happen to people who got their bank to approve them selling their home at a loss.

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In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condo in Miami.  He will not be able to receive a return on his investment until at least 2025 (or maybe even 2040).

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said.  “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

After three years of plummeting real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is asking the same question.

New research suggests that when a home’s value lowers below 75% of the the amount owed on the mortgage, the owners start to think hard about walking away, even though they can afford the payments.

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Ever since her divorce, Sandye Linnetz has kept an eye on her budget.  When interest rates lower, she negotiates a better payment plan.  She is tech-savvy and cleans her own house.

So when a questionable $9.99 monthly charge showed up on her Verizon Wireless bill after renewing her contract, Linnetz took a closer look.  The charge had no description, she said, just a code, and she wanted to know what it was for.

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After President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address, administration members broadcasted the president’s top priority:  unemployment.

However, the administration is not ignoring health care despite the president’s failure to mention the restructuring until nearly halfway into his speech, Vice President Joe Biden told “Good Morning America (GMA)”.

“The beginning of the speech was to remind everybody not to blame, but to remind everybody what we had to do the first year,” Biden said.  “We inherited an awful lot, and the president basically said, ‘Look, we had a lot to do and now that we got things stabilized, now is the time to focus on jobs.’”

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