PSoTD

Based on how aggressively they sent mail to pitch credit cards to us, over and over and over and over and over and over again, I wonder just how bad the credit situation over at Capital One might be - I know I don't want to invest in it.

Forbes is a little late to this party. Marion, the home of my grandparents and where both my parents grew up, has been a vulnerable town for quite a while. Just seeing what has happened to my grandparents' old home shows me that. But Forbes, thanks for taking your attention away from :CueCat and looking around to notice if there are any real problems out there deserving some consideration!

Americans will move to them only if there's a clear economic reason to do so. They're just not buying new cars, period.

I better use my Circuit City gift card in case the local store closes...

My wife noticed the Linens 'n Things on Simpson Ferry Road in Camp Hill was going out of business, and wondered if it was just that store. Nope, all of them.

You outlast some of your vendors. Some that we've seen disappear, or swallowed, in the past:

Sir Speedy printers
PA State Bank
epix
Mail Boxes Etc.
OneMain.com
PCS One
Velocity Networks

I do not understand why financial institutions believe it should cost over $30 to stop payment on a check.

The restaurant sector...

Families are increasingly foregoing restaurant meals, opting to pick up prepared meals at grocery stores or buying the ingredients to cook meals at home. In a recent national survey of 1,500 people, Mintel found that 57 percent were dining out less frequently. Of those, 63 percent said they were cutting back on meals at mid-priced casual-dining restaurants (the category that includes places such as Applebee's and Coco's), 58 percent at upscale "white tablecloth" restaurants, and 53 percent at fast-food restaurants.

One of the things I noticed in the parking lot, in the shopping cart pickup area, and in the store at large was that I was in the minority of folks that were using the large shopping carts. Most everyone was using the small shopping carts, even folks carrying around kids with them. I've noticed that the carts in the storage area, from week to week, seemed to be getting a growing ratio of smaller carts to larger carts, but didn't think too much of it as I walked past the small cart rows.

But after seeing families shopping with the smaller carts, I think I'm getting it. There's a lot at play here - smaller packaging, more expensive food, and the need to shop around for the best deals. So people are probably doing all their grocery purchasing in one stop for the week less than they did in the past, and they're buying less stuff, and the stuff they're buying is coming in smaller packaging. Shrink, shrink, shrink goes the need for larger carts.

American Patriots will keep their money in the stock market.

You know that political message is coming...

For anyone that has most of their "assets" tied up in real estate and the stock market, they're fortunate if they're more than a little over half as wealthy as they were one year ago.

Better living through reuse.

BOSSES at a composting site in Suffolk are planning to use residents' rubbish to make electricity.

For years, Greenview Environmental has composted waste from St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath at its site in Lackford, near Bury St Edmunds.

But the firm now plans to use new technology to turn 26,000 tonnes of collected waste each year into compost and electricity.

The system involves green waste from kitchens and gardens being put through a modified Tollemache machine which pulverises the waste before air is forced through it, heating it up to kill potentially-harmful microbes.

The end product can then be left to become compost or fed through an anaerobic digester which will generate electricity.

It is believed the site could produce between one and three megawatts of electricity which will be sold to the National Grid.

The chairwoman of the National Automobile Dealers Association says the credit crunch and economic problems are likely to cause 700 auto dealers in the U.S. to go under this year.

There's more to it than that, I suspect.

My wife and I have larger vehicles that do not get the greatest gas mileage. On the other hand, mine is paid off, and hers will be in a few months. Yes, gas prices are high, but the truth of the matter is that I drive my car less than 8000 miles per year, and that's WITH vacation driving, and although she commutes five days per week, it's mostly highway driving. I suspect we drive less than the average family of four, thanks to my working at home.

My question is this: what is our economic incentive to buy a new car? Both of our vehicles are in pretty good shape. Miles per gallon could and should be better, but frankly, I think that buying a new car today is a fool's game - if technology doesn't improve MPG dramatically in the next five years - or replace MPG with a different fuel source altogether - then humanity is pretty well screwed by our own lack of initiative. I'm betting that cars five years from now will render the new cars of 2009 as relatively obsolete, or at least of little value on the resale market. So what is the economic incentive to buy a new car? I don't get it.

I didn't realize that they're still made in this country... And Altoona tested!