Credit Card Issuers won’t be able to increase the interest rates on existing balances as long as customers pay their bills on time. They’ll also need to notify customers at least 45 days in advance of interest rate increases and most fee changes.

Another new law that was passed on bill is that college students cannot be preyed by the credit card issuers and companies in which they cannot solicit a campaign on school campuses.

“Credit Card companies always try to blunder their customers and lure them with nice promos, but in reality, the promos asks a requisite before getting what it is said – long after you made the purchase”

Credit cards are the number 1 source for business boost in case you need some small loans. First, it will get you what you need as soon as possible; and second, it will be billed after the next 30 days. But consumers, always check, ask for clarity and clearance from the company if you there seems to be something vague. This will not only save you money, but save you from unsolicited debts as well.

Someday, the issues regarding the transparency of Credit Lending companies will be resolved and hopefully, they’ll become more honest, trustworthy, and reliable. You can also check the links available on this website for more clarity about the topic.

Although the Bloom box – which was developed by Bloom Energy – has been under development for more than a decade by the said company but the details about the existence of the Bloom box has been kept a secret, keeping everyone working on the company work like undercovers.

Bloom box was featured on 60 minutes last night and was interviewed. It was really unknown to everyone that corporations like google and ebay were using the Bloom box already for testing. It was a surprise to the interviewer of 60 minutes that there were already users of the bloombox that returned positive feedbacks about the product.

Bloom Energy’s plans on the product is not to keep their energy innovation just a product but to start this thing as an all-new industry that will replace everything that’s related to energy. But right now, although targeting homes, their plans on the bloom box is to start off with corporations having the bloombox used as a compliment, but not as a replacement – for now.

Bloom box is a fuel cell powered energy source project product of Bloom Energy. It was featured on 60 minutes last night.

Avandia is a stand-alone anti-diabetes drug sold by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Reports have suggested that this drug (rosiglitazone – the drug itself sold as Avandia) is associated with the significant increase in risks of heart attacks – but some disagreed. The controversy behind these drug used to be unresolved.Based on the claims made by the US confidential reports, the said drug can cause approximately one hundred heart attacks each month if taken – and this is obviously a really bad side effect for a medical drug. And in case the drug is continuously taken, more heart attacks and cardiac arrests could take place – around 500 heart attacks and 300 cardiac arrests. Due to the findings made by researchers, efforts today are being made to pull the drug out from the market and the prescriptions and is planned to be effective immidiately.Physicians recommend that diabetics to begin using Actos medication to control their diabetic state in replace of Avandia. Still, GlaxoSmithKline is still defending the their drug Avandia is safe as they are challenging the researches who claims that this drug is how it is claimed.In case you are using Avandia, contact a doctor immidiately to find out more about the drug; how it can affect you; and some other alternative medication (like actos medication) to prevent further damages to your health.

Why is Bank of America Down? Several reasons were pointed out by angry Bank of America customers. Some say that Bank of America website is down because the bank just want to get some extra charges for late payment of credit card and mortgages fees. Others say that Bank of America website has been a subject of a cyber attack.

Whatever reason it is, there should be some explanation into it. A large bank’s website such as Bank of America could not afford to be down for several hours for just a ’system maintenance’ reason. In any case, if it was a planned website maintenance, then BoFa should have informed their clients about it.

Apparently, this is not the first time that Bank of America’s website went down. There has been various reports that Bank of America’s website has been down three times already during the past years.

We hope that someone from the Corporate Communications should speak up regarding this issue. Fortunately, for some Bank of America clients, they can access their mobile banking account through an alternative link to Bank of America’s default mobile banking website.

For those Bank of America customers who wants to access their mobile banking accounts, here is a link that Bank of America customers gave to alternatively access it while Bank of America website is still down.

https://sitekey.bankofamerica.com

Yesterday, US banking giant Goldman Sachs re-ignited the bonuses row of investment banks after revealing its staff shared a £10billion pot last year – a 50% leap.

That means, 32,500 Goldman Sachs workers, including 5,500 in the UK, got an average £300,000. The 2008 bonus pay out was £6.6billion.

Goldman Sachs, which re-paid its $10billion government bail-out, said the bonus was 35% of earnings – less than 2007 when it paid 44%.

Goldman Sachs staffs will also get a chunk in shares with claw-back powers to reduce risk-taking.

It can be noted that on April 20, 2009, Sun and Oracle announced a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun for $7.4 Billion. The proposed transaction is subject to Sun stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals like the European Union and customary closing conditions.

Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner handling the Oracle-Sun merger said: “I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products.”

The Oracle-Sun merger still needs approval from regulators in Russia and China, but Oracle said it expects “unconditional approval” from those countries and that it “intends to close the transaction shortly.”

Oracle executives have said the acquisition of Sun would allow their company to offer a complete portfolio of products and services and help spare customers the frustration of having to build business IT systems from piece parts.

Due to this news on approval by the European Union on the Oracle-Sun merger, Oracle shares were up .56%, to $25.20, in premarket trading Thursday.

JPMorgan is the first of the largest U.S. banks to report earnings, thereby sending a positive benchmark among investment banks.

JP Morgan’s net income increased to $3.28 billion, or 74 cents a share, from $702 million, or 6 cents, YoY.  Twenty-two analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated per-share earnings of 60 cents which definitely JP Morgan beat.

JPMorgan plans to hire an additional 325 small-business bankers and 100 bankers to lend to mid-sized companies, according to a Dec. 14 statement. JPMorgan will increase lending to small businesses by as much as $4 billion this year.

JP Morgan’s CEO  Jamie Dimon has earned a profit in every quarter of the financial crisis, offsetting loan losses in consumer banking and credit cards with fee income. JPMorgan was the No. 1 underwriter of stocks and bonds in the U.S. last year, and Dimon’s success in weathering the global credit contraction may help him restore the dividend to pre- crisis levels before his competitors.

Congratulations for JP Morgan!

It is mandated to create a special report by December 15th, 2010, and will be holding hearings year round. The Commission is expected to have their webpage — fcic.gov — go live today.

So here are the members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission from Nightly Business Report:

TOM HUDSON: So what caused the financial crisis? And more importantly maybe what can be done to prevent another one? Susie, these are the big key questions tomorrow in Washington.

SUSIE GHARIB: You’re right Tom and there’s sure to be a lot of finger pointing. Now a new panel will try to figure out what brought the American financial system to the brink of collapse.

HUDSON: This panel is called the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. And for its first meeting, the heads of the nation’s biggest banks have been called to explain what they did and did not do. Here’s Darren Gersh with a preview of what to expect.

DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: What more could they say? Big bank CEOs have been dragged before Congress. They have been summoned to the White House. Now, economist Simon Johnson says the crisis commission should find out whether these lords of finance have really learned anything.

SIMON JOHNSON, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, MIT: The perception that we’ve had, somewhat from a distance is that they remain very arrogant. They don’t recognize the mistakes they make and they don’t understand the nature of dangerous power which they have accumulated.

GERSH: To understand that power, Johnson and other observers say the panel must get down into the nitty gritty of decisions made by bankers on the frontlines as the crisis began to build. While volumes have been written about the financial meltdown, Johnson says the idea is to put bankers’ actions into a context most people can understand.

JOHNSON: Somebody’s enormous salary for example, while managing something that became disastrous and wiped out the life savings of a million people.

GERSH: That is a very different approach than the 9/11 commission, after which the financial crisis investigation is modeled. 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick says the terror investigation did not name names. Instead, it concluded the entire intelligence community suffered from what the commission called a failure of imagination. She also expects that played a role in the financial collapse.

JAMIE GORELICK, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: To me it seems no one imagined that a catastrophe of this sort could emanate from the seemingly sound financial system and seemingly robust regulatory environment that we had.

GERSH: Johnson thinks regulators understood there was a dangerous bubble in sub-prime mortgages and home prices. But they did not understand that bubble would tank the financial system.

JOHNSON: That’s a failure of analysis, a failure to understand what is staring you in the face, rather than a failure to sort of imagine something fairly new.

GERSH: When members of the financial commission have asked for her advice, Gorelick suggested they do something Washington rarely does these days: build a bipartisan consensus based on what actually happened.

GORELICK: I would really hope that one of the things that this commission could learn from us is to spend time together really working on the facts and that will, in itself breed an environment in which one can come to consensus.

GERSH: Gorelick says if Democrats and Republicans can spend a year examining the financial crisis and come to a consensus on what happened and why, that could help restore some of the confidence that’s been lost in our government and our markets. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.

Infosys’ net income fell 4.9 percent to 15.6 billion rupees ($344 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31 from a year earlier, the company said today.

Infosys’ Chief Executive Officer S. Gopalakrishnan, who has cut prices to retain business from customers in the U.S. and Europe, said last month clients were getting more confident about the economic recovery and would gradually step up spending.

Infosys won orders last quarter from Georgia Pacific LLC and Royal Philips Electronics NV, as Europe’s biggest consumer-electronics maker hired the Indian company to provide finance and back- office services for some of its operations in Latin America.

“Overall, it suggests that IT companies can lead the market for a rally. Infosys has smartly managed currency fluctuations and costs, ” said Deven Choksey, chief executive officer of K.R. Choksey Shares & Securities, who manages about $118 million for wealthy individuals.

This section of the IRS highlights a number of tax breaks intended to help parents and students pay for higher education. This publication explains tax benefits that maybe available to you if you are saving or paying education costs for yourself, or in many cases, another student who is a member of your immediate family. However, most benefits apply only to higher education.

What’s in this publication? Chapter 1 explains the tax treatment of various types of educational assistance, including scholarships, fellowships, and tuition reductions. Chapters 2 and 3 explains two tax credits which reduces the amount fo your income tax: The Hope Credit and The Lifetime Learning Credit. In Chapters 4 to 12, ten other types of benefits are also explained.

Take advantage of this IRS Publication 970 now and know how you can save more on education costs. If you want more details about this publication, you can go and read the full IRS publication here.