The prepaid card is about to tackle one of the more challenging issues for prison re-entry. Continental Prison Systems (CPSZ:PK) , a $4.6 million start up in California, offers a banking system for inmates. They call it the E-Z Card & Kiosk. The company installs kiosks inside state prisons and then issue debit cards to inmates. They refer to the system as the “cashless jail.”

Prisons and their prisoners face some unique challenges. It costs a lot of money for prisons to write checks. According to CPSZ, it can cost as much as $17 per check. Hard to believe, but then again, who’s counting? It is easier to see why a debit card would help prisoners. Even though prisoners can live (more…)

More students attend college, but many are not ready for college coursework. Too many would appear to have been given top grades in spite of not demonstrating equivalent performance on standardized tests. The United States needs to have top schools and top students in order to compete in the economy.

Education is an economic issue. Education is a force in social equity. Education leads to a higher standard of living.

We know that a college degree confers a lot of benefits. There is more job security for people with a college degree. The unemployment rate for people with college degrees is less than 5 percent, even in this recession. 

Education is a proxy for skill. Skilled workers make more money. Still, it is a combination of education and experience that makes the difference. Plenty of graduates are not seeing any value in (more…)

GMAC Mortgage, a division of Ally Financial, announced that it is suspending foreclosure actions on properties in 23 states. Today’s story, published here by the Washington Post, offers no insight into what could motivate GMAC to pursue this plan.

Could GMAC have woken up on the cool side of the pillow and decided to show some love for its delinquent borrowers?

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The FFIEC has released the 2009 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data this morning. HMDA data cover most mortgage loan applications. The data is released annually. While consumers can ask for the data from lenders directly as soon as April 1st, the Federal Reserve holds its release of the entire set of loans until the middle of September. The new data covers mortgage loan applications made in 2009.

The data was released at 11:10 AM EST. Users can download software that runs with the data, or they can pull out aggregated reports for different geographic areas.

The HMDA data has been released with loan pricing data since 2005. In that regime, HMDA reported the cost of loans in the relation to current 10-year Treasury notes. For instance, if the 10 year (TNX) yield was 2.86 percent at the time of the loan’s origination, then the loan cost would be reported if the price was at or above 5.86 percent. There was a 300 basis point gap for first lien loans and a 500-basis (more…)

Santa Barbara Tax Products Group (SBTPG) announced a new agreement to offer refund anticipation loans via a partnership with MetaBank on August 20th.

It was published in a short statement on the web. While the delivery of the news was straightforward, it portended a lot. SBTPG would take its expertise in refund anticipation lending, which came from its former status as a part of Pacific Capital Bancorp, and potentially take up some of the “space” that had been vacated by JP Morgan Chase and by Pacific Capital. Remember that both were out of the market.  Chase voluntarily exited after this year’s tax season. The OCC made Pacific Capital stop.

SBTPG worked with MetaBank to provide refund checks during the previous tax season.

“While our foundational year with MetaBank was a success, we are optimistic that our best days are ahead as we build the right relationships that will help TPG, MetaBank and our business partners exceed customer expectations,” said Rich Turner, CEO of SBTPG, in a prepared statement.

The timing was interesting. Less than two weeks prior, the IRS had canceled its debt indicator. That was big. It meant that any refund loans made in 2011 would have to be underwritten in a black box. There would be no ability to gauge the likelihood of a problem in a refund. SBTPG was itself somewhat of a brazen entity. It used the (more…)