WalletPop

Crime really doesn't pay.

If you ever need reminding of that beloved chestnut, it can be good to go to a place like DumbCrooks.com or to grab a book like World's Dumbest Crooks by Allan Zullo. Or do what I do, and occasionally look for stories on the web of true tales of dumb crooks.

Here are just a sampling of some stories that have happened in the last month.

Carjacker stops to ask for directions to the bank. That was the headline of an Associated Press story in April. In Cleveland, the 19-year-old carjacker took a father and two kids hostage in their SUV and then the youthful gunman began driving around the city, looking for a U.S. Bank, apparently to drain his victim's bank.

There are days when I'd just like to lie in bed. All day.

If you've thought the same thing, then, boy, have I got a deal for you. Wired reports that NASA is offering a study that will pay people $17,000 to stay in bed for 90 straight days.

Of course, there's a catch or two.

Years ago, I was reading an Archie comic... yes, you can now either nod in appreciation or start mocking me... and earlier today, one gag that has long stuck in my head flashed back to me. Archie Andrews is going to the movies, and he sees a sign at the theater advertising something along the words of: Attractive Prices.

He goes right up to the ticket booth and discovers that the price is something shocking (given this was the 1970s, it was probably $3). Archie is indignant, asking how they could possibly advertise these prices as attractive.

And the woman at the booth smiles and says, "Well, we like it."

I thought of that when I was reading about a Harris Interactive study that was released earlier this week by iCongo, a business to business web e-commerce company. One third of American adults say that they are more likely to shop on the Internet, as opposed to going into a store, because of high gas prices.

And seeing the survey and thinking of the Archie comic is when it hit me -- not for the first time -- that what's bad for one person's wallet is usually good for another. Online retailers probably are making out better than usual right about now due to some folks thinking twice before driving out to a book or toy store. In fact, maybe some of the public are giving online grocery stores a second look. And crummy as the economy may seem, I'm betting that certain industries and niche markets are growing very nicely right now. Especially companies that conduct surveys about the shaky economy -- they must be making a killing.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

About seven years ago, shortly after my wife and I moved into our house, it started raining, and the roof began leaking. We hadn't been in the house a year, and so naturally we wondered if the previous owners of our home knew anything about this. But I hardly had time to dwell on the dampness of our new dwelling. About two months after filing a claim to have some roofers make some repairs, a lightning strike took out our sump pump in the basement in the middle of the night, and when I came downstairs in the morning, I was stepping onto a wet, mushy carpet underneath about two inches of water.

Before the water even receded, we filed another claim, foolishly thinking that that's what a home owner should do. What can I say? We were young and stupid. Almost needless to say, we were told that our policy wouldn't replace the soon-to-be-molding carpet and received a check for a few hundred dollars to replace my damaged fax machine and other random items in my home office. Then, as anyone experienced in this sort of thing can predict -- our insurance dropped us. Our crime? Filing too many claims. Two in about six months, in fact. I still sometimes lie awake at night, feverish and guilt-ridden for having the temerity to use my home owner's insurance.

I want to do something that isn't often done and pay homage to a government agency for a moment.

I'll say right off the bat, that I really have no deep understanding of the inner workings of this agency. For all I know, we'll read a few hours from now some scandal emitting from this department. But almost every day, for the last six years or so, I've been getting their emails, giving me an appreciation for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Some time ago -- and I'm not sure if it was for journalistic reasons or that I was about to become a parent and was suddenly worried about recalls of cribs, baby toys and the like-- but I signed up to get daily emails from the CPSC. If there's a recall on any product in the United States, I know about it. Well, unless I forget to look at the email. When you get approximately, I dunno, 250 a year, it happens.

I don't know what it says about the state of global commerce, but almost every day, there's a recall from some manufacturer in some part of the world, far more than the children's toys with lead that made headlines last year. Tuesday, for instance, it was dune buggies. If you own a Twister Hammerhead Dune Buggy, you'll probably be interested to know that TJ. Power Sports, of Irving, Texas, has recalled them. Seems that the seat belt adjustment for the shoulder buckle can break if there's an impact or stress. That's important because when you drive a dune buggy, that's supposed to happen. It's a DUNE BUGGY. Anyway, should that adjustment break, you might be ejected. Just so you know.

If you haven't been thinking of buying a Chrysler lately, maybe you should. The Detroit News is reporting that Chrysler LLC is offering customers guaranteed gas prices for the next three years. Our sister blog, the ever-vigilant, AutoBlog, was one of the first to report the news yesterday.

The sales plan is called "Let's Refuel America," and almost every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicle being sold allows you to also sign up for a gas card that will reduce the price you pay to $2.99 -- for the next three years.

Clearly, it's an interesting deal and possibly a fantastic one, depending how high gas prices go. Currently, The Detroit News reports, someone would save approximately $1,000 per year if you have a 12-mile-per-gallon vehicle. People who are not interested can get a different incentive like a rebate or a cash bonus.

But I don't know what's more depressing -- that Chrysler has to bribe people with cheaper gas to buy its cars... or that $2.99 is now considered a deal at the pump.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Several days ago, the 30th anniversary of spam came and went.

We're talking email, and not Spam, the food product. Anyway, I looked at quite a few articles that ran on the day of the anniversary May 3 or around then, like this story that originally appeared in The Washington Post, and I can't find any that quoted the man who began it all, Gary Thuerk. I was particularly interested in what he might have to say because I was lucky enough to interview him for Entrepreneur magazine during the 25th anniversary of spam.

At the time, I was getting more spam than I ever had in my life. I get a lot now, but in 2003, I was bombarded, and my computer was riddled with viruses and Trojan horses and other fun things. So when I was assigned to interview Thuerk, I had a lot of choice words prepared for him. I was going to light into him like a barbecue. I couldn't wait to pummel him with my gratitude for what he did on May 3, 1978, which is to be the first to send an unprompted email to a small but select number of people who had email, and he tried to sell these elite computer users, naturally, a new type of computer. I admit I wasn't thinking like a professional, but had made this personal. I wanted to do my best 60 Minutes Mike Wallace impression, and for Thuerk to fold like a house of cards and apologize for unleashing such a rotten practice into the world.

I always thought I was pretty open minded about things, and I still think I am, but seeing Tom Barlow's recent post on WalletPop about Miley Cyrus' much ballyhooed photos in the latest issue of Vanity Fair made me think, "Huh?"

I like Tom too much to be angry at him for calling the photos "art," but "art" was the last word I thought of when I saw the picture on various newscasts.

I should ask him if he's a parent, particularly if he's the father of a daughter. (I have his email. I could have asked or written him my opinion directly or simply put my thoughts down in the comments section. But it's much more fun to rake him over the coals over WalletPop.) As the father of two young daughters, who are four and six, I can completely understand what all the fuss has been over the photos.

The Miley Cyrus photos are not art. Actually, forget that point. Maybe they are art, and maybe they aren't. Art is in the eye of the beholder, really, and I don't really want to try to win that argument. But the photos are also commerce and being used to sell magazines. (I'm sure I'm helping to sell some issues right now.) And I'm tempted to even go all 1950s on everyone and call the picture of Ms. Cyrus giving that come hither look, in the buff under a blanket, smut.

Nothing is private these days.

That's all well and good if you're an open book and don't mind people knowing intricate details about your lives. Some writers -- I'm one -- are apparently genetically disposed to being an open book -- and certainly millions of people have a yearning to tell everyone's what's on their minds on blogs, Facebook profiles and the like.

But what if you don't want people to know what's going on?

The business community is starting to get a taste of that. As you may have read -- there was a great story about it a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal -- Wal-Mart Stores, Inc found that a treasure trove of their corporate secrets are no longer secret. In fact, they're on sale. For almost 30 years, whenever Wal-Mart had a high-level corporate meeting, they employed Flagler Productions, Inc., to film their meetings where while being filmed, everyone nevertheless felt free to speak freely.

When I first read this, I thought, "Good idea. Tape those meetings. Stave off the brain drain that happens to so many companies when older executives leave, and later their replacements are left thinking, 'Surely, our company has dealt with this crisis before?'" But Wal-Mart had suggested to Flagler that to save money, they reuse the videotapes, and so for whatever reasons they decided to videotape everything, it apparently wasn't for posterity.

You saw the news. Now you can wear it.

A friend of mine forwarded me a link yesterday, and at first, I was sure I was looking at one of those fake news sites, or maybe some scam. It didn't seem possible. But there it was, right on a CNN web address. They're selling T-shirts with headlines on them, and while that doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea, the headline I was looking at read: Crying 4-year-old found along highway.

Then below that, in small print, are the words: I just saw it on CNN. 08:56 a.m. 4.30.08

Now there's a feel-good T-shirt if I ever saw one. I'm being sarcastic, but the marketing department at CNN, I suspect, would say that it has a positive message: The crying 4-year-old boy is doing just fine. He was found in Cleveland, Ohio, roaming near a very busy freeway, looking for his lost dog when the police and local news crew found him. It's a nice enough story with a happy ending. And should you be interested, you can buy the T-shirt for $15.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

I've had a couple close calls over the years, but happily, I've never had the experience of having anything repossessed. But if anyone reading this has had something hauled away, if it makes you feel any better, you're obviously not alone.

In this almost-but-not-quite recession, repo men have some enviable careers. Newspapers around the country have been publishing stories about local repo men raking in the bucks, taking away mostly vehicles, from cars to campers, and motorcycles to motor boats. According to KHOU, a Houston TV news station, 1.5 million vehicles were repossessed last year, a 15-percent increase from 2006. 2008 is expected to jump 10 percent from 2007.

But you can't really blame the repo men. They didn't create the current economic conditions, and they are just doing their job, and while I'm sure they're glad to be making extra money (who wouldn't want that?), I doubt these guys are getting their kicks off another person's misery. Besides, somebody's gotta do it.

Some time ago, a woman wrote a letter to The New York Times, explaining how her life had been pretty much ruined by a loan shark.

She had borrowed $50 when her daughter was sick and had to pay three consecutive monthly payments of $22. It began a cycle where she wound up broke and then foolishly went to another loan shark. She eventually lost her job (the loan shark went to her boss when she couldn't make a payment), and finally began working at a new place of employment for a very small salary and naturally couldn't pay the loan sharks she owed money to. She ended her letter by noting that "the blood-suckers are hounding me to death."

She signed her letter, "Helpless."

The year was 1908. One hundred years ago.

Today, that same letter could easily be written, only with the words "payday lending store" in place of "loan shark." That said, a payday lending company may telephone a home relentlessly, trying to get their money back and then some. They may sue a person in court. They may help make life miserable for some people, decimate their credit score, send them into bankruptcy and financially ruin them for years to come, but at least they can't legally send someone to appear in your doorway and threaten your health, or stalk your boss.

Borrowing money with interest rates you can't afford is still a poor idea -- pun intended -- but at least predatory lending offers a safer option out there than loan sharks.

Payday lending stores started to swell in the early 1980s when many banks, angling for better profits, moved out of poorer neighborhoods. That's when the industry truly started to come into its own. It also didn't help when, in 1979, laws were loosened governing interest rates on loans. Before 1979, every state loan capped how high an interest rate could go.

Arguably, the predatory loan industry can evolve even more beyond not breaking people's legs -- much, much more. On the other hand, with 13 states having banned or virtually eliminated the payday loan practice, and many others looking like it may, one has to wonder if this path is just going to take us back where we started. Sure, plenty of people abuse the system, but I half wonder if this will just encourage anxious, occasionally-cash-strapped citizens who feel helpless to someday do something they never dreamed of doing -- like meeting a loan shark in a dark alley.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

In the last year, there has been a lot of movement afoot in state governments to either quash payday lending establishments or at least force them to bring down their interest rates. Here's a quick snapshot of how things are going -- or not going.

California: Earlier this month, just as legislators were going to vote on a bill that would have forced payday loan stores to cap their annual interest at 36%, they pulled back. That would have effectively meant that for every $100 a consumer borrowed, he would only have to pay back that $100 plus $1.60 within a two week period.

Oregon: Last July, a 36% annual cap was put on the payday lending industry, and 80% of the stores closed up and went out of business.

Illinois: In 2005, the state put forth many regulations for payday loans under 120 days. So lenders stopped issuing short-term loans and went for loans longer than 120, meaning their customers wind up paying more and going into more debt.

Ohio: They're currently trying to pass House Bill 333, which would do what California was trying to do.

Georgia: Since 2004, payday lending has been a felony. North Carolina has also banned the practice. All in all, there are 13 states in America that have banned or virtually wiped out the industry in their own states: Oregon, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia. They're also illegal in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

And our neighbors to the north? Just as the payday loan stores are popping up everywhere in Canada, partially due to the influx of Americans going north to get cash, many provinces like Ontario are looking into legislation to regulate the industry.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

For years, I've lived by a couple rules. For instance, I never eat yellow snow, and I never step foot inside one of those payday lending establishments.

Well, at least my yellow snow rule is still intact.

Like many Americans, I've never had a high opinion of payday lending loan establishments, but earlier this year, utterly broke, I finally broke down. My reasoning was that I'd rather take out a few hundred dollars from a payday loan place than ask my parents for money, something that really loses its appeal after the age of, say, 25, let alone when you're 38. And the last thing I wanted to do was to try to play a cat-and-mouse game with my bank called, "Write a check to the store and hope it's not cashed for awhile."

So I confess. Earlier this year, for the first time in my life, I went to a payday loan place. But I only did it once. Well, twice.

OK, four times.

Admitting that I took out a payday lending loan isn't exactly something I'm proud of. I imagine it ranks down there with confessing to friends that you took your sister to the prom.

But since I'm admitting I became a payday loan customer earlier this year, I thought I'd give everyone a sense of what to expect if you find yourself in a similar situation. Hopefully what I'm about to tell you will help you know what you're in for.

How to know where to go: I'm not an expert on this, having only gone to one place, but I simply looked through an online phone book and picked out a national payday lending establishment that had a branch within a few miles of my house. I know that there are online payday lenders with no brick and mortar stores, but I know nothing about them, and I figured if I was going to wade into the sleaze, let's make it the most reputable, nationally-known sleaze possible.

What you need to bring: Well, photo ID for starters. I'd call ahead first and ask, since every establishment is different, but chances are, you'll just need your driver's license and some recent pay stubs to show that you're gainfully employed. If you're self-employed, it's more difficult to borrow but still possible. Again, you need proof of income, quite a bit more proof than an employee with a boss and a W-2.