If you used your credit card (MasterCard, Visa, Diner) overseas during 1996 to 2006, you may be eligible for a settlement refund.
1) CCF settlement: I received a form from CCF settlement, which stands for currency conversion fee anti-trust litigation. I remember I used my MasterCard in China in 2005 for my Ctrip booking. Now I am eligible for $25 refund from the settlement. Quoted from ccfsettlement.com:
“The lawsuit is about the price cardholders of Visa-, MasterCard-, or Diners Club-branded payment cards were charged to make transactions in a foreign currency, or with a foreign merchant, between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006. Plaintiffs challenge how the prices of credit and debit/ATM card foreign transactions were set and disclosed, including claims that Visa, MasterCard, their member banks, and Diners Club conspired to set and conceal fees, typically of 1-3% of foreign transactions, and that Visa and MasterCard inflated their base exchange rates before applying these fees.”
2) Next subprime in the making (business week news). The scary part for me is Discover and Capital One said in congress they can raise rate even if a customer pay all the bills on time. So be careful out there…
3) Stocks
I got a little more Longtop (LFT) today. The stock went down probablly because the China central bank raised the bank reserve rate by 50 base points (to its historical high), after the CPC economic meeting announced the key task is to put a break on the economy. Well, my point is that alone should not change the IT spending of Chinese banks. Think of this scenario: when the oil price goes down, the oil producers still hires oil service guys to do the search, the drilling, etc. etc.
Mindray (MR) is trying to break the old high, after a positive article appeared on IBD.