Business Practices & Corporate Accountability Reports

Conflicts of interest and lack of independent funding have doomed both the national and state level accounting oversight systems in the United States. The state accounting boards and the network of overlapping, mostly self-regulatory federal accounting overseers act as classic “captive” regulators, serving management instead of serving investors and taxpayers.

These days, having a credit card is almost a necessity. In most households across the country, a credit card is essential to building up and maintaining a strong financial history while adding convenience to daily life. On campus, students rely on credit to pay for educational needs like textbooks, tuition and transportation. But to make more profit, the credit card industry has stepped up marketing and changed the rules to trap consumers into a cycle of high fees, penalty interest charges and other unfair practices.

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. Identity theft is the taking of another's personal information-such as social security number, name or date of birth-for the purpose of assuming the victim's identity to commit fraud. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that identity theft claims nearly 10 million victims annually, costing businesses and consumers $53 billion.

Credit card lending is enormously profitable. According to annual Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ (FRB) Reports to Congress, it is the most profitable form of banking. But the credit card industry is saturated.

Consumers increasingly rely on cell phone service to meet their basic communication needs. The use of wireless communications has skyrocketed over the past few years, jumping from approximately 24 million subscribers in 1994 to an estimated 170 million today.