If you still have a gift card from Linens N Things, Mervyns or Shoe Pavillion, use them NOW as these retailers are either closing their doors very soon, or may not be accepting gift cards any longer at a later date. If you donÂ’t use the gift card with these stores, you may be left with a worthless plastic card and the unsavory option of filing as an unsecured creditor to the bankruptcy proceedings to obtain any value on the card.

Amazon.com, Overstock.com, Petco.com and many other online merchants offer it. eBay is in the process of buying it. And, with todayÂ’s credit crunch and the ever growing concern about identity theft and fraud, maybe Bill Me Later is offering consumers a better way to pay.

Record numbers of homeowners are losing their homes to foreclosures and the foreclosure filings continue. In August, one in every 416 households in the U.S. received a foreclosure notice. Some states like California, Nevada and Arizona have been particularly hard hit. Though California experienced a significant dip in the number of foreclosure filings in September, due to new legislation that went into effect to build more safeguards into the foreclosure process, the Governor vetoed a bill that would have put in some longer term protections against the type of lending abuses that are at the root of the foreclosure crisis. I'm wondering, isn't leadership about protecting the public against a known danger, instead of asking taxpayers to rescue the mortgage meltdown culprits after the damage is done?

If you havenÂ’t yet, now is the time to use your LinensÂ’ N Things gift card. The retailer has announced that it seeks to close their store doors before the holiday season.

We understand that it is nerve wrecking to hear about bank failures and government bailouts, but rest assured, your money is safer where it is than in a shoebox under the bed.

What do you get for $700 billion? Banks don't go under? What about those empty houses in so many neighborhoods? Consumers Union says that any bailout should be designed to stabilize neighborhoods, not just banks, by stopping the foreclosures. We think that the way to do that is both with new powers in bankruptcy courts and with special rules to make it easier to restructure a mortgage whenever the federal government has bought any interest in that mortgage. We say taxpayers should share in the benefits of any increase in stock price of bailed out investment houses and banks, and that there must be limits on big bonuses and severance packages for the executives who led their companies, and our country, into this mess. We want strong oversight of any bailout process, and real long-term mortgage reform. We also want rules for how the federal government later sells the "troubled assets" it buys back into the market, so that the bailout doesn't leave us a few years from now with a new form of "zombie debt." Zombie debt is outdated debt that shows up much later.
Read Consumers Union's statement: http://www.consumersunion.org/pub/core_financial_services/006177.html