Marketplace - American Public Media

Among a number of scandals rocking Washington, D.C., this week, the tax code as political plaything. IRS officials admit to having given extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Attorney General Eric Holder (who's got problems of his own to deal with, but that's a whole different scandal) announced today that the FBI will begin a criminal probe into the IRS actions. 

Social welfare groups that qualify under the 501(c)(4) exemption don't pay taxes, and don't have to disclose donor names. They are allowed to pursue some political activity.

Loyola Law School professor Ellen Aprill says the goal in reviewing the applications is to figure out how political a group really is. Are they doing some issue ads but mostly education? Or are they focused solely individual candidates and races? 

Attempting to answer those questions left regulators in deeply fraught political territory. President Barack Obama criticized, prominent conservatives condemned and the IRS itself apologized for the specific targeting of Tea Party groups. 

"Congress has put the whole category of political organization into the tax code," Aprill says. "In a way, trying to have the tax code carry the burden of campaign finance reform," Aprill said. 

Regulators have the option of rejecting applications that are too political. While the Treasury Department has not yet issued its report on all of what took place at the IRS, some conservative groups were not rejected, but given were lengthy, personal questionnaires to be completed "upon penality of perjury."

Of 2,500 applications last year, eight were rejected. But Aprill says those figures may not include groups that drop out after a long process.

"Organizations will get enough feedback from the IRS, to say, 'Oh, we're not going to get exemption,' and they withdraw their application," she said. "Knowing the number of denials doesn't give us the whole picture." 

Meanwhile, the political furor could have additional consequences for 501(c)(4) applicants, and the public as a whole.

When asked whether the IRS might shy away from tough calls now, making the special designation more useful for overtly political groups, Aprill acknowledged, "That's a real possibility." 

Richard Crowe, we're happy to tell you, has a job.

Marketplace has been periodically checking in with the long-term unemployed steelworker. After a year out of work he started back up, Monday. A resident of Wintersville, Ohio, he's now commuting to a plant an hour away that produces coke, a fuel used in steel manufacturing.

Because of retirements, the company is hiring. He, too, hopes to retire from there. In the meantime, he's happy to be back at work, earning a paycheck, and saving money for his son's wedding.

'America's Funniest Home Videos' has been on the air for 23 years and has collected over 200,000 of our most appealing home videos.

Now, the show's producers are opening their video archive to advertisers and marketers, offering clips for anywhere from $100 to $100,000.

If 'America's Funniest Home Videos' and YouTube have taught us anything over the years, it's that people will watch adorable babies and cute pets do just about anything over and over again.

It looks like advertisers are beginning to catch on, using those same videos to sell ... just about anything.

1. Google Chrome: For Your Little Man

Google recently re-purposed a well-known YouTube video for an ad they made for Chrome.

2. Hostess: Reach for the Gold - Paul Vault

Before Twinkie creator Hostess went out of business, it launched one final ad campaign during the London Olympics.

Using home videos of spectacular athlete bloopers, they encourage the less athletically-inclined to reach for a golden Twinkie, instead of Olympic gold.

3. Subaru: Backseat - Canine Caruso

A Subaru-sponsored YouTube channel uses a popular home video angle to advertise its new Forester -- the view from the back seat.

4. Ubisoft: Just Dance Kids

This Ubisoft ad for Just Dance Kids combines loud music, bright colors, and cute home videos of kids dancing. What's not to like?

5. Ragu: Charlie Bit Me, Behind the Finger!

What does 'Charlie Bit My Finger!' have to do with pasta sauce? This ad proves it doesn't really matter.

Do you have a favorite home video/advertisement? Share it in the comments.

Marketplace and ProPublica worked together in recent months on an investigative series about what consumer advocates call 'small-dollar, high-cost' loans -- in this case, installment loans offered by a billion-dollar publicly traded company, World Acceptance Corp. of Greenville, S.C.. The company's 1,000-plus loan stores are branded as World Finance across the South and Midwest.

Installment loans can carry high interest and fees, like payday loans. But instead of coming due all at once in a few weeks -- whenever your next paycheck hits your bank account, installment loans get paid down over time -- several months to a few years. Like payday loans, they are often renewed before they're paid off.

Defenders of installment loans say they can help borrowers build a good payment and credit history. Renewing can be a way for the borrower to access additional cash when they need it.

So, we have a few questions we'd like our listeners and followers to weigh in on:

• Are short-term cash loans with high interest and fees really so bad, if people need them to get through an emergency or to get caught up between paychecks?
• Is it better for a low-income borrower with poor credit to get a high-cost installment loan—paid back slowly over time—or a payday- or car-title loan due all at once?
• Is a loan with APR above 36 percent 'predatory'? (Note: the Military Lending Act sets an interest-rate cap of 36 percent for short-term loans to service members, and Sen. Dick Durbin has introduced a bill to impose a 36-percent rate-cap on all civilian credit products.)
• Should government, or banks and credit unions, do more to make low- to moderate-interest loans available to low-income and credit-challenged consumers?
• In the post-recession environment, banks can borrow cheaply from the Fed, and most middle-class consumers can borrow cheaply from banks — for mortgages or credit card purchases. Why can't more disadvantaged consumers access this cheap credit?

Join us here May 16, at 11 a.m. PT

Join us for a live discussion this Thursday, May 16, at 11 a.m. PT, with Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman and ProPublica's Paul Kiel. Just come back to this page, where you'll find the chat window.

We encourage you to leave questions in advance in the comments below. You can also tweet in questions with the hashtag #BeyondPayDay.

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

Once upon a time the fossil fuel capital of the world was the U.S. -- first in Pennsylvania, then in Texas. Then, the center of gravity shifted to the Middle East and beyond. But a new report out today from the International Energy Agency predicts that over the next five years, North America will once again dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas.

Think about what happens when your phone is stolen. You have to go out and buy a new one, then you have to sign up for a new plan with your carrier. With cell phone theft generating new sales for manufacturers, and new contracts for carriers, why would they do anything to stop it?

The housing market is starting to come back in the Southwest, and homebuilders are beginning to build again. But there's a problem.  During the recession, the country lost more than a million construction jobs. And many of those workers have moved on. 

A shift in global fuel production is afoot, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. It predicts that over the next five years, North America will dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas. The trend is in part due to a surge in new technology like hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Juli Niemann, analyst at Smith, Moore & Company in St. Louis, explains what this means for the US economy and the green energy sector.

Once upon a time the fossil fuel capital of the world was the U.S. -- first in Pennsylvania, then in Texas. Then, the center of gravity shifted to the Middle East and beyond. But a new report out today from the International Energy Agency predicts that over the next five years, North America will once again dominate new supplies of oil and natural gas. 

It’s a sweeping shift that few would have expected even just five years ago, when experts saw an era of American “peak oil” looming on the horizon. But, since then, new technologies have evolved faster than anticipated, says Pavel Molchanov, an oil analyst with the investment company Raymond James. 

The big breakthrough, Molchanov says, has to do with new ways of getting oil out of once hard-to-drill spots -- underground layers of shale and other hard rock formations.  You've probably heard of one popular technique known as hydraulic fracturing, nicknamed fracking.  “All of this has unlocked new resources,” says Molchanov.

“The history books are going to go back and talk about this era,” says Phil Flynn, an oil analyst at the Price Futures Group in Chicago.  He says the oil boom we are experiencing now has already begun rippling through the U.S economy.  And that trend should continue, Flynn says, as new U.S. oil supplies lower gas prices, boost consumer spending, and make it cheaper to start up factories here. 

The increasing importance of U.S. oil supplies could also affect global politics, Flynn says. “Instead of the U.S. being beholden to foreign oil producers or OPEC,” he says, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, made of countries based mostly in the Middle East and Africa, “now OPEC has to work with us.” 

The North American oil boom raises other questions. In many local communities where the oil and gas boom is taking place, some residents are concerned about the potential environmental impact of these new technologies, on things like ground water contamination and earthquakes. 

The European Space Agency has just given the green light to a project called Biomass, a satellite resembling an upside-down trampoline, that will be able to scan forests from outer space. Scientists hope the project can tell us a lot about the world's forests, the carbon they hold, and their impact on Earth's climate.

Jon Amos, science correspondent for the BBC, tells Marketplace Tech host Ben Johnson more about the project.

French politicians have their eyes on a potential new source of revenue: smart phones and tablets. France’s minister of culture has endorsed a plan to tax iPads, iPhones, Androids, and other devices by up to four percent in an effort to finance French movies, television, and music.

Stephen Beard of Marketplace's European Desk explains the proposal and looks at how people are reacting to it.

World Acceptance Corp. of Greenville, S.C., is one of the biggest installment lenders in the country, with more than $500 million in annual revenue and a stock price that’s been soaring in recent years. It operates a chain of more than 1,000 storefront offices in 13 states across the South, Midwest and Mexico.

World Finance stores (that’s what the signs outside say) provide what consumer advocates call ‘small-dollar, high-cost’ installment loans, paid back in fixed monthly installments, to credit-challenged consumers who don’t have a lot of other options for borrowing money.

As Marketplace and ProPublica have found in an investigation, the company profits heftily by providing loans that are loaded with interest, fees, and credit insurance, often near the maximum allowed by state law; from renewing those loans multiple times, adding on more interest, fees, and insurance premiums; and from aggressive collection practices to get their money.

In yesterday’s first installment of the series "Beyond Payday Loans," 31-year-old Katrina Sutton told her story.

She took out a $207 installment loan from a World Finance store in her Atlanta suburb of McDonough, Ga. to fix the brakes on her 1997 Crown Victoria. She was working part-time at Walmart at the time, but her hours got cut and she had trouble paying, so World renewed her loan, providing her with a small payout -- $44 -- of principal she’d already paid off.

When she still couldn’t pay, World sued, garnished her wages and froze her payroll debit card.

Let's go to the loan store

The World Finance loan store where Sutton got and renewed her loan is in a tidy suburban mini-mall.

Inside, it looks like a real estate office. Borrowers sit in the open on chairs in front of a manager’s desk to answer questions off the loan application: what credit references can you offer? What household possessions can you put up as collateral -- car, TV, power tools? The manager explains the repayment plan, and hands over the check. She says the borrower can cash it for free down the road.

The manager of the store wouldn’t talk to Marketplace. But we do know a lot about the company’s lending practices from former World employees interviewed by Marketplace and ProPublica.

One former employee's story

Matthew Thacker is 29. He lives with his wife near Lexington, Ky., and runs a nonprofit, The Pride and Service Project, to support LGBT service members nationwide. Back in 2006, he was just out of the Marines, newly wed, and recently relocated to the small town of Tifton, in southern Georgia.

He needed $500 for moving expenses, and walked into a loan store owned by World Finance (a World subsidiary called Colonial Finance). The former service-member is six-foot-plus, serious and soft-spoken. He was offered a loan and a job.

“I was the assistant manager,” Thacker explains, “so I was responsible for dealing with the customers, loan delinquency, making loans.”

Thacker worked there for a year, making $10.50-an-hour. He paid off his own high-interest loan right away.

But, he discovered, a lot of his customers couldn’t. Annual percentage rates (APRs) on World’s small-dollar loans typically run in the 50-100-percent range.

“We were persuaded to give loans to people who didn’t have the means to repay them,” says Thacker. “So, essentially we were setting people up for failure.”

Thacker sold the add-on credit insurance products hard. He says he was encouraged to by his bosses -- it was one of the ways the company made money. But he doesn’t think most customers even understood that some of the credit insurance was voluntary.

“From my interactions with people in making loans, they were completely oblivious to the fact that they were being charged insurance,” says Thacker. “They presumed that everything that they weren’t receiving in principal was just interest, a higher interest rate, basically.”

When folks did get behind on their payments, he says his job was to get them to renew -- start the debt again from scratch.

“Renewal of the loans is probably one of the worst parts of the business, because it was a means of catching a loan up,” Thacker explains.

A delinquent borrower would be encouraged to sign up for a renewal to pay off the original loan and clean up their finances with more borrowed money.

“If you had any money available in principal, we could renew the loan," he says. "And we made more money off that because we sell the insurance on it again — more life insurance, more accidental death and dismemberment.”

Not to mention who they were selling the loans to in the first place.

“A lot of the loans that we made were to people on social security, or disability, who were on fixed incomes,” Thacker says. “It was very easy to convince them to renew their loan because it was like ‘oh, do you want an extra $100 today for renewing your loan?’ Many of the customers, whenever it was up for renewal and there was even $30, $50 to get, they would renew it, and they would do it over and over and over again. We would just tell them, they have money available, would they like it? Ninety-nine percent of the time they would say yes.”

Coming to the end of the line

When borrowers said they couldn’t pay, it was the former Marine’s job to lean on them, to threaten to take their stuff. Sometimes, they threatened back.

“We made high-risk loans so we went to parts of town that weren’t the best,” he recalls. “One experience: I had pulled into somebody’s driveway, and then somebody immediately pulled in behind me to block my car. But it wasn’t so much the fact that I was intimidated by collections, it was the fact that I was going to these people’s homes and basically harassing them, on loans that I knew they couldn’t pay.” 

World said in a letter responding to questions from Marketplace and ProPublica that it rarely seizes collateral that borrowers pledge for loans. Chris Kukla of the Center for Responsible Lending says the collateral usually isn’t worth much, and it’s a hassle to sell it off. But the threat is incredibly effective.

“Because if you get a phone call that says, ‘If you don’t pay me I’m getting your car,’ or ‘If you don’t pay me I’m backing a truck up and I’m going to empty your living room,’ you’re going to find a way to pay,” says Kukla.

Profits from the debt business roll in

World did not agree to an interview. In response to written questions, the company said its fees, interest and insurance premiums, as well as its collection practices, are proper and legal. World said it underwrites its loans to make sure borrowers can afford them, and that it informs customers in writing of the terms of their loans.

Marketplace was able to call into -- and record -- the company’s annual earnings call with investors on April 25.

After introducing himself and the senior management team, CEO Alexander “Sandy” McLean ran down the company’s impressive financials: record revenue and earnings in 2012; new stores opened in Indiana and Mexico, and across the company’s core territory in the South and Midwest. The stock (WRLD on NASDAQ) has been on a tear -- up from around $60-a-share in April 2012, to over $90-a-share today. 

Installment isn't payday: But do the Feds know that?

There have been persistent questions about the possibility that World — and other subprime non-bank installment lenders—might face increased scrutiny from federal regulators and Congress. They could also face increased restrictions on their fees and interest rates from state regulators and legislatures.

Several investment analysts queried McLean specifically about a white paper just published by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, which has oversight over non-bank consumer credit companies. Titled “Payday Loans and Deposit Advance Products,” it focuses almost exclusively on payday lenders. Analysts asked: could installment lenders be next for this kind of inquiry from the federal government’s new consumer advocate?

McLean acknowledged the threat, as the company has done repeatedly in recent communications with investors and securities regulators.

“The concern over the past two years is the introduction of federal oversight, which we’ve not had previously, and there’ve been concerns about what’s going to result from Dodd-Frank and the creation of this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” he said in the earnings call.

“I personally believe that we provide a good service, that we offer products that banks and other institutions are not offering, and that it would harmful to a large segment of the population to not have access to credit,” McLean continued. “But all of a sudden you have a bureau with an incredible amount of power, that can deem what products are good and what products are bad, regardless of how it affects that individual consumer.”

McLean said in response to one analyst’s question that 77 percent of World’s loans are renewals of existing loans by borrowers who have not completed paying off their debt. But he insisted that that is nothing like the pattern identified in the CFPB’s whitepaper, which criticized some payday lenders for flipping loans six or more times per year, dragging borrowers into an ever-deeper cycle of debt.

Payday loans are for a single lump sum, due in full on payday. McLean pointed out that World’s installment loans get paid down every month, a little at a time.

“I don’t believe the cycle they’re talking about in the payday lending -- there are no paydowns associated with that, it’s the same amount borrowed time and time and time again,” he said. “These are two different products.”

Structure of installment loans responds to consumer cash needs

Securities analyst Henry Coffey at Sterne Agee has covered the company for more than a decade, and agrees with McLean’s favorable comparison of World’s installment loans and payday loans (he also covers several players in that industry). Sure, says Coffey, World’s loans are pretty expensive. And many borrowers do renew. They tend to have poor or no credit, low incomes, and use their installment loans like credit cards: paying down, borrowing back up.

“The World Acceptance customer, the pawnshop customer, the payday loan customer—they tend to be a consumer who lives paycheck to paycheck,” Coffey explains. “And they have regular borrowing needs, and they’re not really good at flushing down their debt to zero. Then the question is: Which products are structured to allow for a paydown, and which products are structured in a way to lead to the acceleration of the cycle of debt?” 

“Theoretically,” he continues, “an installment-loan product is better structured to be paid down to zero than a payday loan product, which is just two weeks and a single bullet payment, with lots of renewals and rollovers and the like. So I don’t think there’s anything inherent in the structure of the product that World is offering that aggravates the problem. I think the problem probably has more to do with the nature of the borrower, who has regular cash needs that don’t sync up.” 

Chris Kukla of the Center for Responsible Lending counters: The problem’s not the borrower, it’s the loan.

“It’s an incredibly sophisticated lending arrangement that looks really simple on the front end: ‘We just charge this little bit of interest and it’s no big deal,’” says Kukla. “You start peeling back the layers of the onion, and what you’ve got are people who are just on the hook forever, and they’re paying hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of dollars in insurance fees, and interest, and origination fees, just to borrow a little bit of money.”

Try to borrow a little -- and not get burned

One consumer who’s just started down that road of ‘borrowing a little bit of money’ is 44-year-old long-haul trucker Henry Brown. He was at a World Finance loan store in Hinesville, Ga., near Savannah. “I ain’t borrowed but like a hundred-and-some dollars,” Brown said. It was for “personal items and a little trip,” he added, with a sheepish laugh.

Brown borrowed $130 from World. He’ll pay the company back $200 over four months. The effective annual interest rate, including the fees and credit insurance: 237 percent.

Brown said the loan’s working out “great” for him. He’s sure he’ll pay it back and not renew. But from what we’ve seen in our investigation, the financial odds may be stacked against him.

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

Web forums in the U.K. are buzzing about photos depicting a possible weaponized drone in China. Wired Magazine reports experts are pointing to the so called Li-Jian -- or Sharp Sword -- an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle. A recent Pentagon report predicts the Chinese military will soon unveil new long-range drones.

Domestic drones are getting more attention from the government in New Jersey. State legislators want to restrict all drone use in the state unless there's a terrorist attack. A more lenient bill is also being considered. It would allow firefighters and police to use unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now saying a drone in Saskatchewan saved a life. An unnamed motorist who flipped his car at night in near-freezing temperatures was able to contact police, but couldn't guide them to his location. A regular helicopter equipped with night vision was unable to help. Enter a Draganflyer drone. It pinpointed the man's heat signature with its infrared camera, and emergency responders were able to get him to a hospital for treatment.

This final note today which, honestly, I just can't.

Even if you've never been there, you know the lines at Disney World are long, yes?

That gets us to an item in the The New York Post today: Moms in Manhattan have found a way around that, it seems. They hire disabled people to pose as family members. That gets 'em to a special entrance right at the front of the line. The cost? $130 an hour is the going rate.

Also? I give up.

The housing market is starting to come back, and homebuilders are beginning to build again. But there's a problem.  During the recession, the country lost more than a million construction jobs. And many of those workers have moved on.  

Wages will have to go up to attract those construction workers back, right? It may not be that easy.

Residential construction in the Phoenix area is projected to grow 25 to 50 percent this year over last year. Homebuilders here have been waiting for a recovery for years, but these days, relief isn’t the only emotion they feel.

“It makes me very nervous,” says Buddy Satterfield, the division president for Shea Homes in Arizona. “We are very challenged from a labor perspective.”

During the housing bust, the construction workforce slashed in half in Arizona. Workers headed off to different industries, and other states. And the state's tough immigration laws prompted many Latino workers to leave.

All that makes it tough for subcontractors like Sissie Roberts Shank to fill their crews. “The workers we had back in the housing boom aren’t here anymore,” Roberts Shank says.

Roberts Shank’s company installs air conditioners in new homes. She currently employs about 450 people. “And I would say we have a demand for 100 more,” she says.

Hourly construction wages in Phoenix rose by more than 4 percent last year, according to Burea of Labor Statistics data.

But is that enough to lure workers back into the home construction business? It may not be.

And yet, builders might not be able to afford to pay more.

“The builders are squeezed, essentially between not only rising wages, but also rising material prices,” says David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders.

Crowe said lumber, plywood and drywall are all going up in price.

And even as construction gets more expensive, he says builders can’t add all those costs into the final sale and remain competitive with the rest of the housing market.

“Buyers are still expecting to see bargains,” Crowe says. “They've seen house prices falling in the last couple of years and aren't quite psychologically ready to see house prices increasing.”

And if Phoenix builders were hoping to keep costs low by drawing cheap labor from nearby states, they have a lot of competition. States like California and Texas are looking for construction workers, too.

Major retailers have two days left to sign onto a legally binding agreement to improve factory conditions in Bangladesh and a good number of them already have.

Whatever American companies decide to do, the government of Bangladesh has some big decisions to make.

Today, the cabinet made it easier for garment workers to join trade unions. No small thing in a country where textiles account for 80 percent of the exports.

The government of Bangladesh is "caught between two stools," says the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Dhaka. (That's his way of saying between a rock and a hard place.)

"They're trying to do two things at once," Majumder says. "They're trying to show everyone that they care and they're going to bring in steps that are needed but at the same time, they're going to do everything they can to protect the industry."

The government's fierce protection of the garment industry has created a lot of skepticism among regular Bangladeshis.

"The overwhelming sentiment on the streets here is that not much is going to change," Majumder says.

Why? Many of the country's politicians have close ties to factories and have found wealth in the textile system.

"The first thing that strikes you is just how helpless a lot of people are, which is quite tragic given how many people around the world are linked to this entire industry," Majumder says.

The story is not all downtrodden. Workers have become more vocal and sometimes violent in their protests against the lack of protections in factories, he says.

"The people they have in their sights are the factory owners...for most Bangladeshis, those are the bad guys."

Half a world away, the discord is hidden from Western consumers. Many don't even realize the human cost behind the items they buy, inexpensively, from large clothing retailers.

You may have noticed your bank acting strangely as of late. At the ATM, when opening your mail (snail or digital), or just couch-sitting, watching TV. Wherever you are, your bank seems to follow, trying to offer you perks and rewards.

In my case it’s offers for 5 percent cash back, when and if I use my credit card. But since I already get 1 percent back on all my purchases, I can’t help but wonder, "Why is my bank offering me more money?" 

Greg McBride, a senior analyst with Bankrate.com, says there’s a simple answer: “They want as much of your business as they can get.”
 
McBride says even though the economy is recovering, banks are not in the mood to take on risky loans. And he says the credit card industry is intensely competitive -- it’s dominated by only nine companies.
 
“So often times, bringing in new customers means bringing someone in at the expense of your competitor,” he says.
 
Which is why, if your credit rating is good, your mailbox may be stuffed with many offers right now. Banks think your credit rating is hot. And so, McBride says, if you have good credit it’s likely your bank wants to spend more time with you.
 
“These are also the type of customers that financial services want in the fold for their other products and services”
 
Chris Murray, director of client services at New Control, a digital and direct response ad agency, says for a company like Visa or Capital One to steal customers with good credit from each other is pretty tough to pull off.
 
“The reality is, people like that, already have a credit card," he says. "They make it very difficult for you to switch, mentally to say, I’m going to walk away from the 500,000 miles I’ve got on American and all the sudden start using a cash back card."

Which is why Murray says it can cost up to $500 to win a new customer. Banks measure marketing success in tenths of a percentage. If a bank sends out one thousand pieces of mail and gets three people to sign up, the campaign has been a success. For consumers -- it’s like the prospect of dating again when you already have a trusted, special someone in your life. Who wants to re-read all that small print?

Not Lynwood Hines.
 
“Where there’s bait there’s a hook,” Hines says.
 
Hines works for an engineering company in South Carolina and he notes his credit rating is just under 800. Which may explain the thirteen offers Hines says he’s gotten in the last six weeks from card issuers like Capital One, American Express, Citibank, Chase and American Airlines.
 
Hines says the offers he’s receiving are typical, but he’s not interested in changing cards. Ever since he sent in a late payment on his American Express bill and his interest rate was raised to 30 percent his attitude towards credit has changed.
 
“And that was enforced forever. I had to cancel the card to get rid of it," he says. 
 
So how does he feel about about these new cash-back, free miles, zero-percent offers that have been showing up?
 
“They’re not going to get me.  There’s nothing they could offer me that frankly, that they could afford that’s going to get me to switch. And I don’t think of it as cynical. I think of it realistic.”
 
And that attitude is exactly what will keep the offers from credit card companies coming in.

By the time I got to bankruptcy lawyer Barbara Braziel's office near downtown Savannah that Wednesday night, I'd already put about 250 miles on my rental car chasing down predatory lenders out at Fort Stewart Army Base. Now I was back in Savannah for interviews on a related story: high-interest installment loans that get regular civilians into a world of financial hurt.

It was going on 7 p.m. and I was worried that Braziel would have closed up legal shop for the day.

Not a chance.

Braziel presides over a warren of offices piled high with bankruptcy filings and law books. The computer network had gone down during the day.

"They call it 'the cloud,'" she quipped in her slow Southern drawl. "But the girls call it 'the fog.'"

Braziel is a different class from her low-income clients; she's a professional running a busy business, working long hours, making payroll. But I could sense in the way she looked at her bankruptcy client that day, the way she touched her arm gently as she urged her to tell her story, that she identifies deeply with these people who come to her in desperate financial trouble.

People who can't find an easy way out in the short-term—without getting deeper in, in the long-run.

"I too was a single mom," she told me. "You're trying to keep the lights on, you're trying not to be homeless. So you really just need to solve the problem you have in front of you. And the cost is secondary."

Read other stories from the Marketplace and Propublica joint investigation "Beyond payday loans: Installment lending and the cycle of debt." Explore the whole series here.

The SEC will meet with experts today to examine whether credit rating agencies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's should change the "issuer pays" model in which financial companies pay firms to rate their financial products. Critics of the practice say it encourages companies to pressure rating firms for favorable grades -- like the coveted AAA -- even if they don't deserve them. 

"It's as if judges at a figure skating competition were being paid by a skater to give the skater all tens," said Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn). "Those triple A ratings from Standard & Poor's and Moody’s that were given to junk financial products, they were really at the heart of this meltdown."

Franken said companies should not directly pay rating agencies for their services. 

"In my model, an idependent board would assign the initial rating of a financial product to a credit rating agency based on the agency's capacity, it's expertise, and, over time, it's track record," Franken said. 

Rating agencies insist that their practices are transparent and that "issuer pays" is the simplest, most easily-implemented model. Some economists say while the current model isn't perfect, it would be hard to find one that doesn't involve a conflict of interest. 

"One has to have a high level of confidence that this independent board would get it right," said Lawrence Wright, a professor of economics at NewYork University's Stern School of Business, when asked about Franken's proposal. Wright said that while rating agencies might not be perfect, there's nothing to guarantee the board would be either. 

Think about what happens when your phone is stolen. You have to go out and buy a new one, then you have to sign up for a new plan with your carrier.

With cell phone theft generating new sales for manufacturers, and new contracts for carriers, why would they do anything to stop it? 

Kevin Mahaffey is with the mobile security firm Lookout. He says there is one incentive: Keeping customers.

“The manufacturers and the operators care very deeply about trying to improve people’s experiences," Mahaffey explains.  "Because they’ve found that making people happier is profitable.”

Mahaffey says the industry has created a new database to track stolen phones, but it doesn’t work outside the U.S., and many of the stolen phones end up in other countries.

George Gascon, district attorney of San Francisco, takes this approach when he’s taken in meetings with cell phone makers and carriers, and he asks them to fight cell phone theft.

“For the people in the industry to step up and do the right thing without necessarily being dragged into court or being legislatively forced to do this,” Gascon says.

Gascon says it’s up to the industry to decide which way to go.

What can you do to prevent your cell phone from being stolen? Check out our infographic of cell phone theft stats and prevention tips.

Chances are, there's soybean in your diet. You eat it directly, down soy milk with your coffee, or more likely eat meat that fed on crushed pieces of soy.

By far the dominant maker of soybean seeds is Monsanto. This morning the company won a unanimous case before the Supreme Court that threatened to undercut its market share. In other words, Goliath beat David.

Like Intel's dominance in the chip market, almost every soybean in America has Monsanto inside. Monsanto makes some 90 percent of soybean seeds sold. And the product patent means farmers have to buy them every year.

Today's case threatened to undo that. But antitrust scholar Mark Patterson of Fordham Law School says the ruling means the company keeps its market position.

"It gives it the freedom to continue to control year by year the sales of its products to farmers," Patterson says.

Once a chemical maker, Monsanto came to dominate the seed business over the past two decades.

Agricultural economist Neil Harl at Iowa State says, first, the company patented its Roundup herbicide and Roundup-ready seeds. Then, it acquired other seed producers. And as Harl sees it, Monsanto now impedes competition.

"Beating in the heart of every good capitalist is the heart of a monopolist," Harl says. "So we have to have rules, we have to have the economic police on the beat. Or we end up with concentration and that means higher prices."

By one estimate, farmers pay double for the Monsanto product, though some say it pays for itself in higher yields.

Now, patent protections do expire after 20 years, and Monsanto's Roundup Ready product effectively goes generic in 2014.

Still, that's the original, arguably obsolete version of the product.

"You're not going to buy a Commodore 64 in today's computer market," says Indiana soy farmer Ron Moore. "They just aren't going to make it because no one will buy it. That's what's going to happen to the varieties with the Roundup 1 herbicide tolerant traits in them."

Now, Roundup Ready 2.0 seeds are on the market.