DoomwatchTM vs. Timesizing®
Collapse trends - Sept. 15-30, 2001
[Commentary] ©2001 Philip Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

9/30/2001  weekend symptoms - 9/29/2001  symptoms -
  1. With bailout hopes fading, Japan banks face the music - Losses are finally being put on the books, by James Brooke, NYT, C2.
    ...With Japan now in its fourth recession in a decade, the huge weighit of bad loans is dragging on the country like an anchor, economists said.
    [When they're talking about four recessions in a decade, perhaps it's time to get a more functional description. We suggest "chronic depression." Why? Too much concentration of income to allow adequate domestic demand. Why? Lack of a workweek that automatically varies inversely with underemployment due to rapid automation and layoffs. Not to mention lack of overtime-targeted training. Prescription? Replace downsizing with timesizing.]
    The scale of the problem is immense: some estimates put the total of non-performing loans at one-sixth of the economy's entire annual output: the comparable figure for the U.S. at the peak of the savings and loan debacle was only 3%. In Japan, bank lending has fallen every month for nearly four years....
    [And with an interest rate at near zero, where's the incentive?]

  2. Hawaii's lifeblood slows to a trickle, pointer digest (to B1), NYT, C1.
    Never have the prospects for Hawaii's tourism-dependent economy plunged as low - or as quickly - as in the days since Sept. 11.... About the only busy place, it seems, is the unemployment office.
    ["Buy stocks in the unemployment office."]

  3. The airports - Thousands of jobs at stake as terminal shops struggle - 'Malls' on the way to the plane suffer from fear of flying, by Joe Sharkey, NYT, C3.
    ...Yesterday, a group of airport retailers spoke with executives from 15 airports about their problems, including their ability to pay rent.... "One of the key issues here is what's going to happen with the rent" to airports, said Gregg Paradies, the CEO of Paradies Shops Inc., an Atlanta company that operates about 300 stores in 57 airports under brand names like Brooks Brothers, Sharper Image, Nautica, PGA Tour and Shades of Time..\.. Airport Retail News...began a daily newsletter to augment its monthly magazine during the crisis. "Airports have to pay their bonds. The retailers have high fixed costs, payroll and inventory."...
    [A prescription for the same kind of domino effect we saw in the late 1920s.]

  4. [And what kind of leadership is recreating the same kind of crisis 72 years later?]
    After havoc, reviving a legacy - Founder of Wall Street fund steps into brother's shoes, by Riva Atlas and Geraldine Fabrikant, NYT, C1, C3.
    ...On Sept. 11, David [Alger], 57, the CEO [of Fred Alger Management], was lost in the WTC attack.... That is forcing [his older brother and founder of the firm, Frederick Moulton] Alger, to relocate from his self-imposed tax exile in Switzerland to resume direct control of the firm, which manages $15 billion....
    While Mr. Alger is determined to do what it takes to keep his business going...he said that he has had no second thoughts about giving up his United States citizenship, even with patriotic fervor so strong.
    "I was in the Marines," he said, noting that although he is a citizen of St. Kitts, a Caribbean nation, he still pays income taxes in the United States. But his concern for preserving his fortune is paramount. "I will continue to take steps to avoid estate taxes," he said.
    ["Leadership" that will do almost anything to avoid payback. That does not make for "united we stand." One has to wonder where and if on the rising scale of money accumulation this humanoid would feel secure enough to lighten up and loosen his clutching fists. The biggest American mistake - security is money, not other people.]

9/28/2001  symptoms -
  1. Patriotic purchasing - Americans are being urged to spend, but analysts doubt the strategy will have an impact in the long run, by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, C1.
    [Pathetic!]
    In the last week, economists say, an unprecedented number of politicians and business leaders have been talking up the economy, telling Americans to hit the malls, buy a car, or jump back into the stock market, both as a show of patriotism and to help counter the nation's economic slowdown - a downturn that has been accelerated by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.
    [How much patriotism are our 'captains of industry' showing while they're throwing Americans out of work, instead of sharing the pain and trimming everyone's hours? Any of these millionaire politicians preaching to them? Probably not. They're where the pols get their campaign contributions.]
    Talking up the economy in times of crisis is hardly a new strategy. It was used during World War II to persuade thousands of Americans to buy war bonds..\..
    [And back in the Great Depression. This kind of begging for spending is a pathetic and hypocritical strategy. It basically involves rich people, who can't possibly spend any significant fraction of their hugely concentrated income and wealth, preaching at ordinary people who are mortgaged and indebted up to the hilt to "do as I say and not as I do." Example? -]
    Even Bill Clinton did his part last weekend, charging $342.79 worth of clothing at an NBA store in Manhattan [telling] reporters that he was just following...Giuliani's command to "go shopping."...
    ["Even Bill Clinton" indeed. The kind of money that the amoral 'Sleazemeister' ex-prez is wallowing in trivializes the 350 bucks he parted with for threads last weekend. The only time this preaching strategy seemed to work was during the War, and it twarn't the preachin' that done it. It was the War's huge withdrawal of manhours from the job market in the most wasteful way, killing and maiming, that harnessed market forces in raising wages and benefits back home and centrifuging income out of the "black hole" economy it had collapsed into during the 1920s when the concentration of income on a smaller scale mimicked our own on a huge scale during the 1980s and 90s. The smarter way to strengthen the centrifugal force on $$? Timesizing. ]

  2. [A sign of the failure of mere preachments?]
    Layoffs push jobless claims to 9-year high, Bloomberg via NYT, C4.
    ...as people dismissed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks began to file claims for state aid.... First-time jobless claims rose by 58,000 to 450,000 in the week ended Saturday, the Labor Dept. said. That was the largest gain and the highest level since the week ended July 25, 1992, when a companywide shutdown of General Motors plants led to an increase of 69,000 claims filed. [And] New Yorkers have filed about 75,000 claims since the attacks [but] only 11,000 have showed up in the national statistics so far, the Department said..\..
    Job losses "will probably get worse before they get better," said Nicholas Perna, a private economist at Perna Assocs. in Ridgefield, Conn. That is likely to push unemployment above its current 4.9%, analysts said....
    [Still sounds low, but when the economy really hummed during World War II, anything over 2% unemployment was regarded with alarm, and since then, employment conditions (e.g., the growth of part time and the 30-year stagnation of wages) and changes in the definition of the rate itself have resulted in our official unemployment rate counting less of the problem. See our page on the supposedly low unemployment rate.]

9/26/2001  symptoms -
  1. Unions at airlines assail management for denying...pay and benefits - Workers feel they are being asked to shoulder more pain than executives, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, C1.
    [But note in our good news today (9/26/2001) that one executive, Donald Carty, CEO of American Airlines, says he'll take no salary for the rest of the year, although at the same time, "American announced it would not pay severance to the 20,000 workers it planned to let go." according to the article below.]

  2. House Republican leaders balk at any help for laid-off workers - A commitment [to consider such legislation] by the House speaker [Hastert, just last Friday] is apparently forgotten - An industry bailout allows executives to keep collecting their large salaries, by Lizette Alvarez, NYT, C6.
    [So is it any wonder that -]

  3. Spending weakens as confidence wanes, by Louis Uchitelle, NYT, C1.
    [or as the inside headline has it -]
    As consumer confidence weakens, spending also begins to slow - Signs of a recession even before the attacks on Sept. 11.
    [Keep concentrating wealth in the top brackets in unspendable excess and guess what, consumer spending can't keep up with the vast investment funds available for new productive ventures. Gee, what a surprise, but the pathetic truth is, for all the talking about it (none) done by our six-figure analysts and economists, it does come as a surprise, every recession. When will they ever learn?  And as for how to reverse the dysfunctional concentration of spending power on a gradual and market-oriented basis? - Design and implement a program with all the functional elements of Timesizing. In short, you don't have to use Timesizing. You don't have to call it Timesizing. You just have to have a program that has very similar components and does very similar things.]

9/25/2001  symptoms -
  1. [Taiwan down the toilet -]
    Taiwan: Record high jobless rate, AP via NYT, W1.
    Taiwan's unemployment rate hit a record high 5.17% in August as factories closed, companies cut workforces, and college graduates entered the job market. The rise from 4.92% in July represented the 11th consecutive month of increasing unemployment.
    [Time for some Timesizing "Tidy-Bowl."]

  2. [As Emily Litella might ask, what's all this talk about "changed world"? for example -
    We must guard against hatred, letter to editor by Dan Logan of Boston MA, Boston Globe, A18.
    ...Now, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the world as we Americans knew it has changed....
    [As colleague Kate (from the Bronx) points out, the world as Americans knew it hasn't changed - it's just that Americans never knew the world as it was - they were too busy chasing money and playing Nintendo. Anyone who follows London's The Economist or other European media knew about all these goings-on but Americans and American media are sooo self-absorbed. Here's the most dramatic example -]

  3. 'Peaceable kingdom' gets slighted again, by Alex Beam (beam@globe.com), Boston Globe, E1.
    ...Canada has taken to calling itself "the peaceable kingdom."
    [More likely a few eccentrics have, such as -]
    ...Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye..\..popularized..\..the term...
    [yes, the brilliant eccentric of otherwise-provincial Victoria College, the United Church enclave within the oecumenicity of the University of Toronto - otherwise-provincial except for the late Bill Staples, the Shah-tahn of pre-theologs, and oh yeah, there was bird-like Jaye "Katherine Hepburn meets a piaf" Macpherson, a rumored regular in Frye's seraglio - Wednesday's was "their evening."]
    ...although I first encountered..\..the term...several years ago in a newspaper column written by Norman Specter, who had just returned to his homeland after a stint as Canada's ambassador to Israel. The comparison between the two countries - one of them on a constant war footing, the other continually reducing its armed forces - struck him as particularly stark.... One commentator suggested the country's fighting forces could barely fill a hockey stadium.... Canada boasts 3,000 infantrymen, 1,600 of whom are on peacekeeping in Bosnia.
    [We don't like the hubris of the "peaceable kingdom." That's asking for it just as much as the twin Trade towers were ever since they went up. Too much of a target. We're satisfied with Canada being "terminally nice" - spellt b-o-r-i-n-g. The kind of niceness our Nottingham grannie displayed when she rooted "all that shooting" by TV cowboys out of her North Toronto apartment and switched to Lawrence Welk.]
    ...The biggest news on the day I left [Nova Scotia] was Bush's omission of Canada from the list of countries he thanked during his speech to the joint session of Congress. He mentioned a gathering of South Korean schoolchildren [South Korea??! - and called Mexico "our oldest friend] but glossed one of the largest and most moving post-Sept. 11 remembrances in the world: an assembly of 100,000 Canadians, many of them in tears, who observed three minutes of silence and later listened to our national anthem sung on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. Many Canadians thought Bush's omission was a deliberate affront to a neighbor deemed too peaceable for his mission of revenge.
    [Ah, no. That would require him to have some actual intelligence. To actually know about someplace beyond the great US of A, even if right beyond. And so few Americans do, doncha know.]
    More likely it was an oversight.
    [Or the inability to handle more than one Idee Fixe at a time.]
    And that is the unkindest cut of all. Yet again, America has acted as if Canada wasn't there.
    [Oh we dunno. Let Canada count the blessings of inconspicuosity. "The Lord loveth whom He chastiseth," and America ruineth whom she loveth. Look at Russia today after ten years of U.S. "aid" - or any of the supposed beneficiaries of those Typhoid Mary's of international aid, the U.S.-dominated IMF and World Bank. Yes, let Canada count the blessings of being the "wallpaper of the north" in the circumscribed ken of a hippopotamus-sized nation of ignorami.]

9/23/2001  weekend symptoms - 9/22/2001  now disaster is upon us, we explore not omens of its coming, but symptoms of its presence -
  1. [clearest evidence yet -]
    Share prices plunge 14% for the week, second worst ever, by Alex Berenson, NYT, front page, C3.
    ...as many investors moved their money out of stocks and into less risky assets in the face of a deepening economic slump. For the week, the Dow Jones industrial average posted a 14.26% loss [1,379.70 points to close at 8235.81], its largest since the Great Depression....
    Both military and economic worries are driving the sell-off, analysts say.... The economy, which was sputtering before Sept. 11, has almost certainly entered a recession, possibly a deep one, many economists say....
    In addition, traders and institutional investors, especially those who work in Lower Manhattan, may be more tired and frightened than other Americans, since the securities industry was one of the chief targets of last week's attack, said Abby Joseph Cohen, chief U.S. investment strategist for Goldman Sachs. "This was an attack on the United States and the business community and the financial markets, and many of us who work down here are feeling it," said Ms. Cohen, whose offices are only a few blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. "There's a weariness."...
    [Here's part of the accompanying chart -]
    Worst weeks of the stock market, Bloomberg Financial Markets via NYT, C3.
    ...July 21, 1933..\..close...88.71..\..change from previous week...-15.55%...
    May 17, 1940..\..close...124.20.71..\..change from previous week...-14.21%...
    [Note this stock-market evidence that the Great Depression continued into the 1940s despite the billions that FDR had spent, after blocking the 30-hour workweek, on the feel-good New Deal.]
    Nov. 8, 1929..\..close...236.53..\..change from previous week...-13.52%...
    Oct. 23, 1987..\..close...1950.80..\..change from previous week...-13.17%...
    [Clearly it's payback time for the callous hubris toward employees of the last 20 years of mass layoffs. Ya happy about this, ya satisfied, Chainsaw Dunlap and disciples?  Here's the Boston Globe's version of the headline -]
    Dow off 1,369 after a week of tumult - Percentage drop eclipses those of 1987, 1929; foreign markets suffering, too, by Scott Bernard Nelson, BG, C1.
    [Note reporters are so nervous they can't even get the Dow's drop right. Our guess is that the Globe's 1,369.70 point drop is right, and the NYT's 1,379.70 is wrong, purely on the basis of the scribal principle of "legius difficilior potest" (the more difficult reading prevails). In this case, it would be easy for a seven in the NYT's 79 to pop up from the following seven or from 69 rounded, but there is no source for the six of the Globe's 69 unless it's original.]

  2. ["bad, but..."]
    An airline bailout - Congress votes billions for industry and sets up victims' fund, by Lizette Alvarez with Stephen Labaton, NYT, front page.
    ...a $15 billion package today to bail out the ailing airlines....
    [The terser Boston Globe version was -]
    Congress OK's $15B in aid for airlines, by Sue Kirchhof, BG, front page.
    ...The package, which now goes to the White House for...Bush's signature, passed the Senate 96-1 and the House 356-54. It includes $5B in grants, $10B in loan guarantees, and special liability protections for the nation's carriers. In addition, it caps airline executives' salaries and creates a federal fund to compensate victims of the terrorist attacks.... To be eligible for aid, airlines would have to cap executive pay at either $300,000 or Y2000 levels for top officials already earning above that amount. Some lawmakers had worried that CEOs of troubled companies could craft "golden parachutes" for themselves, even as they laid off workers..\..
    [The whole government bailout idea is bad because -] But

9/18/2001  omens -
  1. ["bad, but" -]
    Wall St. reopens six days after shutdown; stocks slide 7%, but investors resist panic... Trading is fast paced as sellers worry about fragile economies, by Gretchen Morgenson, NYT, front page.
    The stock market survived the first day of trading in six days with significant losses but without a disastrous plunge yesterday. ...By the end of the day, the Dow Jones industrial average had fallen 7.1%, or 684.81 points, to its lowest point since December 1998...8,920.70, its biggest point loss ever but 14th worst in percentage terms..\.. It is now down 24% from its peak in January 2000, well into what is considered bear market territory. The Nasdaq composite lost 6.83% yesterday, piling up a 69% loss since its high in March of last year.... [It] lost 115.83 points...to 1,579.55....

  2. Defending skyscrapers against terror, by Kenneth Chang, NYT, D1.
    [Bad idea - skyscrapers are indefensible.]
    ...The south tower collapsed 56 minutes after impact. The north tower lasted an hour and 40 minutes....
    In the decades since the World Trade Center was built, however, new materials and building techniques...may have given people more time to escape.
    [Whoopeedoo.]
    The key would have been slowing the fires. The sprinkler systems offered little help....
    [Better idea - forget the Big Penis contest to build the world's tallest building. Learn the lesson of Babel's Tower (Genesis 11). Cut the hubris. Those towers were targets from day one. As colleague Kate says, no building should be taller than the reach of the nearest fire department's rescue ladders. How many times do we have to relearn the hard way the bloody lesson of the Triangle Shirt Waist fire?   Whoa, are we psychic or what (and don't say "mental") - both tomorrow's NY Times and Boston Globe have articles from our "skyscrapers are bad" viewpoint. The latter is "Rebuilding - Urban downscaling urged - Some architects, planners push {for} cities without skyscrapers - 'We have to downsize... cosmopolitan urbanism can be achieved with much smaller buildings.' essay author J. H. Kunstler," by Anthony Flint, 9/19/2001 BG, A31.]

  3. Allies caution Bush against military 'trap' - 'If America's closest ally [Britain?] is having serious misgivings, then America should listen', by Charles Sennott, Boston Globe, A21.
    LONDON - Even as European allies continued to express sympathy..., the older empires of Europe offered words of caution. In Britain, France, and Germany, leaders expressed wariness of...Bush's escalating rhetoric of war, and what they fear may be plans for massive air-strikes and a ground invasion of Afghanistan. Many Europeans see such moves as misguided and possibly falling [grammar???] into "a diabolical trap," as the French foreign minister put it, aimed at pulling the United States into a war it cannot win....
    [Why can't the biggest military power in the world win a war in Afghanistan? Because many of the biggest military powers in the world throughout history have tried and failed, such as Alexander, Tamerlane, Genghis Kahn, Britain, and USSR. What about missiles and airstrikes? As one commentator said last night on Charlie Rose, that would just move around the rubble. As the Globe editorial cartoon yesterday put it, "Problems in revenge ... for example, to retaliate for an attack on two of the tallest buildings in America, we could attack two of the tallest buildings in Afghanistan...", by Danziger, Tribune Media Services via 9/17/2001 BG, A18, and the picture shows a rubble strewn landscape with two three-storey buildings, one with the third storey already blown off. And back to our original article today, the headline is even stronger when it comes to potential allies on the next page -]
    Bush image of crusade upsets some potential allies, by Kornblut and Radin, BG, A22.
    WASHINGTON - A remark by...Bush about his 'crusade' against terrorism has provoked a wave of condemnation throughout the Arab world, where the centuries-old term is widely interpreted to mean a Christian holy war against Muslims....
    [Except for that one disgraceful crusade dba genocide against "heretical" Christians in the Langue d'Oc region of France. Think of it. A crusade against Christian Europeans blessed by the Pope. But then, that's basically what the Inquisition was later, and lest we Protestants get too self-righteous, that's basically what the later witch hunts were as well, in both Europe and America (Salem, Mass.). And the "white witches" with their "spectral evidence" against supposed black witches were the worst. But how realistic is it to hope for help from such "potential" allies throughout the Arab world, sez you - assuming the Bush League doesn't brown them off? Here's a clue from the following page -]
    A common foe thaws enmity - 'This is a watershed event if people want to seize it, including the issue of what to do about Iran.' US official on shared interests, by Anthony Shadid, BG, A23.
    Iran and the United States, whose relations have been strained since the 1979 revolution toppled the pro-Western shah, may have found common cause in a campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.... Iranians are Shiite Muslim, a minority sect within Islam. The Taliban are Sunni, and their brand of Islam - banishing women from the work force, forcing men to wear beards, and banning many girls from school - has angered even Iran's clerical leaders, who have described the Taliban as medieval....

9/16-17/2001  weekend omens -
  1. 9/17 Sudden drop in air travel strains rail and bus service, by Kowalczyk and Krasner, Boston Globe, A10.
    With thousands of Americans unable or unwilling to fly, cracks have emerged in the country's rail and bus services, and some specialists questions whether financially struggling Amtrak, in particular, can handle a dramatic surge in passengers if air travel is permanently hobbled....

  2. 9/17 Boston left with vacant feeling - Tourism grounded during peak season, by Stephanie Ebbert, BG, B1.
    Six large conventions planned for this week and last have been canceled and hundreds of hotel reservations scrapped, fanning fears that the terrorist attacks and disruption in air travel will dig into the area's crucial tourism industry.
    Although three conventions - featuring about 11,000 attendees - hope to reschedule, tourism officials fear the impact of the tragedies will linger as the region begins its important [brightly colored fall] foliage season....

  3. ["bad but" -]
    9/16 Salary increases slide with economy - Wage pressures ease in some industries, by Alan Earls, BG, G1.
    [Here's an example of a confusing headline, because the same phenomenon is reported to two different audiences who view it in opposite ways and give it opposite emotional charges. The main title, to employees, sympathizes with them that salary increases (good) are going down as the economy goes down - which is a Bad Thing. But the subtitle, to employers, comforts them with the same news in their terms - that upward wage pressures (and labor costs = bad) are weakening in some industries - which is a Good Thing. Seldom do we see two audiences with (superficially) opposite interests scrambled in the same article, let alone the same headline. Was this the fault of the reporter or the editor? The article begins by addressing employees, and we don't have the patience to plow through and see if it varies -]
    Looking for a raise in your current job? Hoping to land a higher-paying job somewhere else? Lower your expectations.... Thanks in part to compensation is also taking a hit, though the impact varies widely by industry....

  4. [we did see a story somewhere last week that credit card companies weren't charging late fees because the post-disaster mail has been slower, but check this out -]
    9/16 More credit card companies reducing grace periods, by Bruce Mohl who can be reached at mohl@globe.com, BG, E4.
    ...The industry norm is still 25 days, but many of the big credit card companies are rapidly adopting the shorter [20-day] grace period..\..a 20% reduction in the amount of time to pay the bill before interest charges kick in.... It's part of a strategy to curb expenses, speed up cash flow, and put more pressure on those cardholders who pay off their balances each month...dubbed 'deadbeats' by the industry.
    [Remember when deadbeats were people who didn't pay their bills at all rather than people who paid off their bills promptly? "Cursed be they who call good evil and evil good," says the Good Book, and creditcard companies are gradually destroying themselves and their industry by their grasping, customer-hostile policies. Phil Hyde has deactivated all his credit cards and now uses only his debit card, which has no extortionate monthly late-payment fees.]
    The shorter payment period means those customers either pay their bills faster - improving the credit card company's cash flow and cutting its lending costs - or get hit with sky-high late fees running as high as $29 at most companies.
    [Apparently millions of consumers have done the same or moved to immediate and full monthly payoff - which Phil found onerous.]
    ...People who pay their bills off each month [form] a group that has swelled from 29% of all cardholders a decade ago to 44% last year..\..
    [Think of the interest the moronic creditcard card CEOs have lost for their companies by switching from a $29 annual fee to "no annual fees," but exhorbitant $29 monthly late fees which they are quicker and quicker to slam you with. We are watching a group of grasping executives killing their industry - because also, more and more fed-up people are cutting up their creditcards and simply using cash. Here's more of their "sounded smart, turned out suicidal" ideas -]
    The trend is unmistakable. As more and more people pay their bills off each month and don't incur the interest charges that fuel industry profits,
    [what's the matter with the profits they get from the 2-5% transaction charges they lay on us via the merchants?!]
    credit card companies have either scaled back...or done away with...freebies all together....
    [Freebies we can live without, but -]
    In a report earlier this year, the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group [MassPIRG] highlighted two other trends.
    1. It said credit card companies are setting their payment deadlines early in the morning before the day's first mail delivery, effectively shaving the grace period by another day.
    2. Credit card companies are also eliminating the leniency periods they might have offered for late payers. In my notice from American Express, the company said I would be hit with a late fee if my payment was not received by the due date. Before, the charge was not applied until the closing date of the next billing period.
      [Compare this treatment of customers to the way airlines have been treating travel agents, repeatedly cutting their commissions. The wealthy in this country have declared class warfare so they can swell their already unspendable hoardings.]
    Needless to say, American Express doesn't view its decision to reduce its grace period as negatively as I do. A company spokeswoman said the company is merely adopting the industry norm....
    [That's just what the rest of the airlines said after the first one started stiffing their own allies, the travel agents.]
    The grace period has always seemed a bit l[on]ger than it actually is. ...For those who mail in their payments, the actual amount of time to pay the bill can shrink to 12 days or less once the time needed for mail delivery is included.
    Dick Edry [a friend?] e-mailed me earlier this year saying his turnaround time can run as little as four days. He said his GM Mastercard bill, with a statement date of April 5, arrived April 12.
    [This raises the probability that credit card companies are also delaying the mailing of their statements in order to make lucrative (for them) lateness likelier.]
    The payment was requested by April 25, which required him to mail it by April 18 [assuming they'd mailed it on time and the mail really did take 7 days!] to avoid late fees.
    "What happens if I take a one- or two-week vacation?" he asked.
    [So we're paying Amex their high $55 annual fee for the privilege of being subjected to arbitrarily increasing extortion? Guess it's time to drop Amex completely!]

For earlier collapse stories, click on the desired date -
  • Sep.1-15/2001.
  • Aug/2001.
  • July/2001.
  • June/2001.
  • Apr-May/2001.
  • Mar/2001.
  • Feb/2001.
  • Jan/2001.
  • Dec.21-31/2000.
  • Dec.11-20/2000.
  • Dec.1-10/2000.
        Earlier Y2000 months accessible via links at bottom of Dec.1-10/2000 page.
  • Dec.16-31/99.
  • Dec.1-15/99.
        Earlier 1999 months accessible via links at bottom of Dec.1-15/99 page.
  • Dec/98.
        Earlier months accessible via links at bottom of Dec/98 page.

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