| PERSONAL FINANCE: Where credit is due
Bob Friedrich always pays his bills on time . . . well, almost always.
Three years ago, he sent in his monthly mortgage payment as usual, but it got lost in the mail. He thought the problem was history after he paid the overdue balance the following month. But when he got his credit report last month, he found the single late payment with a note that it was negatively affecting his credit score. Friedrich, 53, an accountant who lives in Glen Oaks, wasn't happy, even though his score was still an impressive 790 out of 850.
"I think it was improper," said Friedrich, who contested the blemish and hopes it won't appear on future reports, which he checks yearly. "It was a single late payment that wasn't my fault. It was the post office's fault."
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Unbridled Markets: Conservatives Embrace Securitization Run Amok
It seemed like an interesting idea. Federally chartered financial institutions such a Fannie Mae had been selling mortgage-backed securities to investors for decades. Those securities gave buyers higher yields than they could get on U.S. Treasuries but also proved to be relatively secure investments. Even if one or two homeowners defaulted on their mortgages they represented a small fraction of the total mortgages packaged in such securities. And with ever-rising real estate values the chances were good that the full value of a defaulted loan could be recovered. So why wouldn’t it be a good idea to offer investors an even higher rate of return by packaging the mortgages of less creditworthy homebuyers who could not qualify for a standard mortgage but were willing to pay a higher interest rate to become homeowners? That was the question posed by some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States as they began to purchase, package, and sell "Structured Investment Vehicles" or SIVs. There were in fact a number of reasons that such instruments were not a good idea.
Skiing's Last Frontier
There's also the reputation for extreme cold, though in reality Alyeska, about two miles from the coast, generally isn't much colder than mountain towns in the Rockies. Getting there isn't always easy. Airlines cut daily trips to the closest airport, in Anchorage, by as much as a third in winter, which means flights are expensive and book up early. Nine ski areas, mostly catering to locals, are spread out across Alaska, according to the National Ski Areas Association; Alyeska is the largest. The skiers and snowboarders who venture to the state in the winter tend to be of the adrenaline-rush set, coming to heli-ski in Valdez, a mountainous area also in south central Alaska, or to take on Alyeska's double black diamonds. Situated in the Chugach Mountain range about 40 miles south of Anchorage, Alyeska is known for its sharp drop-offs and the dauntingly steep slopes of its north face.
Major labels approve free music downloads
QTRAX, a new legal online file-sharing service that allows fans to download songs for free, announced this week that it will launch with 25 million to 30 million copyrighted tracks with backing from major labels. The free service will be funded through advertising revenue that Qtrax will share with the music companies. Qtrax executives said the company's digital rights management (DRM) technology will count the number of times each song has been played in order to fairly compensate artists and rights' holders, without restricting consumer use. The company has focused on ensuring that its network is free of spyware or adware such as pop-ups that are common on many peer-to-peer networks to improve the customer experience. .
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