BP has been in the news for several months, ever since they lost control of one of their oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico.  Several states have been impacted by the oil spill as it damaged beaches and killed and harmed several marine animals and birds.  What has many frustrated about the oil spill is the time it took to get the spill controlled.  It has just been in the recent weeks that BP has finally gotten a cap on the oil geyser.  Now comes the clean up.  Unfortunately, BP is not willing to help out states.  Texas asked for $25 million in a cleanup grant from BP.  BP has denied it.

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The state of West Virginia has never had a legal payday lending industry. Payday loans, those short-term loans which offer cash advances to be repaid by your next payday, were not allowed in the state of West Virginia and the cash advance shops were not allowed to open within the borders of West Virginia. This didn’t stop some people from getting payday loans, however, even when they resided in West Virginia, as the Internet allowed them to get them online. West Virginia doesn’t want any payday lending done in their state, regardless of its origin, and filed lawsuits against five Internet online payday lenders associated with FFD Companies and finally reached a settlement.

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When money is tight and you need to take care of past due bills or you need to buy something important such as textbooks or new tires, you often must dip into your savings account to make sure those things get taken care of in a timely manner. Often, when funds are low, we must turn to friends and family for a helping hand. Maybe they have a credit card or cash we can use and pay them back when it is possible. Other times, we must turn to banks and financial institutions for our monetary needs.  Many banks only want to loan to customers who have great credit and possibly collateral to mitigate their risk, but often customers have credit issues. These customers are often turned away and have very few options when they are in desperate need of cash. Unfortunately, this situation happens to thousands of people every year. They turn to cash advances and payday loans as a last resort. These loans and advances cost quite a bit but can help someone in a bad situation get out of it quickly. You often pay them back with your next paycheck and fees are included. Many people are opposed to the high interest rates of these options and have lobbied to put caps on the money charged by these supposed predatory lenders. The fees and interest are to counterbalance the losses that these companies realize every day. They must charge extra to make some sort of profit on the loans they give out.

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The economy has been struggling as of late. With the recent mortgage crisis that brought Wall Street to its knees, many of the things we buy have become more and more expensive without us even noticing. Relatively speaking, prices rise and fall without us even noticing, but in some cases, the rise in price is so great that it is impossible to ignore. Late in the first decade of the 21st century, home prices were rising at a staggering rate. Many people who could not afford the homes in the locations they desired were able to buy their dream homes using teaser rates and adjustable rate mortgages. Many of the people in these situations had bad credit or even no credit but assumed that they would be able to afford the balloon payments that they would have to pay in five years or so.  At some point, the mortgages defaulted which had a snowball effect that lowered home prices quickly and many people were upside down and could not sell their homes for the prices they originally thought they could get with the everyday value increases they were seeing previously.

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Gold bugs are in a feeding frenzy as the Fed prints more and more money. These people are adamant that we’re in a depression and the only way how to survive a depression is to buy gold. They point to the Great Depression when banks closed, and many investors lost their money. In Germany, near that time, the German government took to printing massive amounts of money to pay their debts, and pretty soon people were using wheel barrows of money to go shopping, it had become so worthless. At that time, gold prices shot up and people were really wary of paper currency. This, they say, is what’s going to happen in America due to the stimulus act. Thus, they’re advising everyone to buy gold.

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Many a creative genius never put their plans into action for lack of funding. Finding investors and convincing them to offer you cash advances on an idea is sometimes much harder work than actually developing the idea. The same skills that make someone a great creative genius often aren’t the same skills needed to get proper funding for the idea.  That’s why it’s great when a marketplace opens up that not only can help you connect with those investors, but get the funding to put your big dreams into action. Now, there is just such a place for developers looking to create applications of the Iphone: AppBackr.

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