AIG will repay $4 billion in taxpayer aid in what is said to be the bank’s single largest repayment of bailout loans so far, according to The Associated Press.
Repayment Still Up In the Air

I’ve been fortunate never to have fallen down the hole of credit card debt. For those that have, it’s a very difficult situation since lenders, of all types, make more money the longer you’re in debt. Credit card debt is especially dangerous because it’s so easy to accumulate and the interest rates are so high. Consider the hoops you need to jump through for a mortgage, which is backed by an actual home, and the requirements of a credit card seem almost comical.

How depressing is this: CD rates declined for the 20th straight month in June.
The average return on four of the five certificates of deposit we track finished the month lower than they were at the end of May. The other was unchanged.
All five of average CD rates entered July at record lows.
The Federal Reserve reiterated [...]

The government will have more control over how much bank employees are paid as a product of rules adopted Monday by the Federal Reserve. The new rules will give the regulators at the Fed added control over the compensation of traders, executives and other employees at thousands of banks.
The policy does not go so far as to cap pay at banks, but it does give the Fed the right to reject any bank’s compensation practices if regulators find it risky. The rules will apply to nearly 8,000 banks of all sizes.

Don’t expect interest rates to go up any time soon. That’s the big takeaway from a Federal Reserve of San Francisco research paper issued Monday. The paper doesn’t represent the official opinion of the Fed as a whole, but the organization remains unlikely to raise rates given the nation’s high unemployment and negligible inflation.