On today's Planet Money:
The recession's showing signs of easing up, but the credit crisis isn't over. Banks still aren't lending like they used to, to families or businesses.
Ira Jersey, head of U.S. interest rate strategy at RBC Capital Markets, can tell you part of the reason why. Put simply, it's that families and businesses have borrowed too much already. Now they're continuing the slow, painful process of paying the debt down or writing it off.
Bonus: The large cost of small amounts.
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In response to our recent search for items costing 5 cents or less, Kevin writes from WMRA land:
I work at a state university, and each month I get a long list of every toll calls made on my phone, including cost, and I have to sign that each was a work call or else reimburse them. This is an anachronism from when calls cost real money. Now, the cost is trivial. The most recent one I signed had 17 calls and totaled $1.70 and included four calls with a 4 cent charge.
The most expensive call, 24 cents, was a 6 min. call from VA to NM. The cost to the university to print out these forms, distribute them to the staff, have the staff sign them and then for it to be recorded that they are signed (they redistribute them if they are not) must be way more than the total cost of the calls. It is nuts.
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