It’s a sad day when CEO’s - you know guys who are supposed to be educated in the finer points of finance and running a business - turn down private equity in favor of the Federal Government. This has to be a joke, right?

I saw I.O.U.S.A. last night. Not good. The situation that is.

The movie was great. Lot’s of fascinating numbers. We have an $8.8 trillion dollar deficit which is growing by $1.3 billion every day. Our total deficit represents 64% of our GDP and, perhaps, most alarming, 44.6% of our debt is currently held by foreign nations. In addition to the financial deficit the film looked at three other deficits - savings, trade and leadership.

I liked it a lot and would recommend, if at all possible, that you see it. Despite all the alarming numbers, it actually closed on a positive note, namely, “we the people” have the power to change the future. Depending on the potential you ascribe to people I guess that could be seen as a negative conclusion.

Anyway….the reason I mention it is because it brought some clarity to the confusion of my “Another Bailout?” post from yesterday. Last night I learned there is fiscal policy and monetary policy. (Ok, I already knew this.)

But what I didn’t know, is that fiscal policy is controlled by the Congress and monetary policy is controlled by the Federal Reserve. So the $300 billion housing bailout from a few weeks ago was a function of Congress. It had to be presented as a bill and voted on. The bailout that I referred to yesterday falls under monetary policy which the Federal Reserve arbitrarily controls. Whatever amount they deem necessary for a bailout they can finance WITHOUT ANY APPROVAL FROM ANYONE. Truly scary. At least on the fiscal side if “we the people” don’t approve of a bill Congress passes we have the option to remove our respective representative from Congress by the power of our vote. Not so with the Fed.

I’m starting to see why Milton Friedman and Ron Paul think the Federal Reserve is a REALLY BAD IDEA. (At least a highly unregulated one, like we have now.)

Well, as I said, if at all possible, please go see this movie. It definitely can’t hurt and I suspect you will leave with a renewed vigor for and awareness of sound economic principles. That may seem like a boring topic now, but I guarantee it won’t be when we’re all squatting in a van down by the river, living off of cabbage soup and getting an orange as our only Christmas present. It happened to our grandparents - not to mention dozens of other countries who overextended themselves militarily and financially over the centuries (ok, maybe not the van part) - and deficits are no respecter of persons or nations.

Call me stupid, but what was the first $300 billion for? Apparently they need more? I’m really confused.

I’m looking forward to seeing this.

The Fed keeps interest rates artificially low by printing money at will, privatizes profits while socializing losses and spends gobs more than it actually has. And then we’re supposed to be surprised when consumer prices rise twice as fast as expected? Give me a break. For such supposedly smart people they sure are stupid. Way to bankrupt our country morons.

In the complicated game of maintaining a good credit score we decided to keep a low balance Mastercard open. Recently I have become suspicions of Mastercard’s payment collecting process, which apparently, is not designed to make the customer’s life easier, but rather, is designed solely to pad their profits.

Case in point: Mastercard doesn’t accept online payments. You’ve got to be kidding me! I applied for your card online. Why can’t I pay for it online? I can do almost anything else online. Become a minister. Buy a car. A house. Groceries. Clothes. Golf clubs. Airline tickets. Books. Heck, I do so many online transactions every month that I don’t even need my debit card with me. I’ve got the number, expiration date and CSV code memorized. In an era when I can do practically anything online, it is inexcusable that I cannot make a simple monthly payment through your website.

But not to worry. We’ll get through this. So my wife gives Mastercard a call. Surely we can make the payment via telephone. And, yes, we can. But not before Mastercard charges us a $15 automatic phone payment fee!

So let me get this straight. We are half way through 2008. I can do more online now than ever before. But you force me to use your automated phone system to make a payment. Which is especially frustrating considering the voice recognition lady persists in telling me that I don’t speak English. And to top it off you charge me $15 a pop.

There’s got to be a way around this.

I guess we’ll just have to resort to placing a check in an envelope and mailing it the REALLY OLD fashioned way. No schizophrenic automated phone system lady. Good. No $15 fee. Also good. Just a twenty-nine, err, fourty-two cent stamp and good old Uncle Sam to hand deliver our payment. What’s not to like about that? Well, not withstanding the refresher curve on how to address an envelope, where to place the stamp and the irritating inconvenience of the whole ritual it’s not too bad. However, there is one last tricky hurdle to overcome. Timing.

You see Mastercard is great at making sure you get your bill late in the calendar month. So late, in fact, we’re concerned that there won’t be enough time to get the payment delivered before it’s due date. But it was worth a try. Everyday we scour the mail eager to try out our new fangled payment method. Finally, a week before it’s due, we get the bill. We quickly write the check, place it in an envelope, seal it, lick and adhere the stamp and drop it back in the mail for tomorrow’s pickup. Six days to go. Should be know problem. I don’t know how people did this with EVERY bill prior to the Internet, but I think I can live with doing it once a month. That is until…

…I GET SLAPPED WITH A $35 LATE FEE on my next statement! Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! What did I do wrong? Did I write the wrong account number on the check? Did we address the envelope incorrectly? Surely something must have gone awry. But nothing so big a call to Mastercard’s customer service center can’t straighten out. After pushing a few buttons and convincing the scitzo that, in fact, I do speak English, I am greeted by a seemingly friendly customer service rep. He’s got to have the answer. He’s got to be able to help me. And sure enough he does. Come to find out our payment was posted to our account ONE DAY after it was due. Hence the late fee. Hence the title of this post. His advice for avoiding this in the future?

“Try mailing your next payment out sooner. Have a nice day.”

You suck, Mastercard. You may want to pretend that it’s too complicated to setup an online payment system and that you are serving your customers with your fancy online phone payment center. But I see through it all. You are simply playing a dirty little game of extortion. And since you apparently don’t know about this thing called the Internet let me introduce you to it, and something called the “blogosphere” - a lovely little (actually, a really, really big) place where consumers voices are heard. Yes, I may only be a single blogger, but I guarantee that if other people are having the same experience, it is only a matter of time before our frustration reaches critical mass and you have at best a public relations problem, or at worst, legal action. Either way, at some point you’ll likely see a decrease in customers. In fact, I’ve already applied to transfer my measly balance to one of your competitors. Add all those “measly balances” up and you’ve got something called the “long tail”. And just in case you haven’t heard its got a pretty fierce whip.

Between 1996 and 2006 CEO compensation increased by 46% while worker compensation increased by 7%. In addition, there are several CEO’s, like Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, who are making millions while their companies are losing billions (O’Neal reportedly took $161 million in compensation after Lynch reported an $8 billion - that’s billion with a “B” - loss on sub-prime mortgage securities.

Maybe business schools should implement a “non greedy bastard” program into their curriculum. All I can say is disgusting.