Author: A.T.

Joe Cherner, the former bond-trader whiz who’s devoted the last decade of his life to helping the world’s public spaces go smoke-free, finds spam — the unsolicited junk e-mail most of us get — almost as annoying as smoke.

He proposes the following simple solution:

1. Anyone could send spam, but it would all have to have the words “Unsolicited Mail” in the subject heading.

2. E-mail providers would provide users — you and me — with a filter option to refuse mail with “Unsolicited Mail” in the subject heading.

3. “Unsolicited Mail” would be further broken down into categories: “Unsolicited Mail-Products,” “Unsolicited Mail-Services,” “Unsolicited Mail-Pornography,” “Unsolicited Mail-Make Money,” and “Unsolicited Mail-Advocacy.”

4. Unsolicited Mail could be further broken down into sub-categories so people interested in motorcycles can receive spam about motorcycles without receiving other spam.

• A typical spam subject heading would look like this: “Unsolicited Mail Products: Computer Software.”

The e-mail filter choices we’d have would allow us to accept all unsolicited mail, none of it, or some of it, tailored to our interests; e.g., no pornography or make-money spams, but products and services and advocacy. And within products, only spams about motorcycles and stereo equipment. Or within advocacy, only those on issues of . . . well, in Joe’s case, smoking.

Incidentally, I know the heir to the Spam fortune — the physical Spam that you eat — and he is as nice a guy, and as generous, as they come. Who knows? If cigars, which are disgusting and bad for you, can make a comeback, maybe Spam — which is far less disgusting and may not be bad for you at all — is poised for resurgence, too. Can’t you just see Schwarzenegger on the cover of Canned Meat Aficionadogrinning over a tin of Spam?

Anyway, isn’t Joe’s idea a good one? What are we missing here?

It used to be you could drop something weighing a pound or two in the mailbox, if you had proper postage, any time it was convenient for you, and go on about your business. Today, for anything above a pound — like a book or a couple of magazines — you either have to have your own postage meter or else, if you use regular old stamps, you have to walk it down to the post office and hand it to a clerk during postal business hours.

So, recently — in a comment impolitically titled “Going Postal” — I offered a couple of suggestions that it seemed to me wouldn’t jeopardize national security.

From Steven Bostick:

As an employee of the United States Postal Service I found your article highly offensive. The term “going postal” is highly offensive. The individuals who have been responsible for loss of life on USPS property were in obvious need of psychological attention. To imply that all postal workers behave in this manner is ridiculous.

The United States Postal Service did implement the meter strip ruling as a response to lunatics such as the Unabomber. The Unabomber problem has not been resolved until the individual arrested for such crimes has been given a fair trial in a court of law. I believe you should have been a little bit more sensitive before ripping the USPS apart for trying to prevent harm to others. Looking forward toward your reply.

From Jonathan Campbell (in a message titled “don’t quit your day job”):

You may be good at picking stocks, but on issues of security you are way off. Keep your comments and opinions to stuff you know about, not something you feel to be a “waste.” If the bomber is willing to wait in line, so should you. It’s nice to know, people care so much, that they are not willing to wait in line at the post office. Obviously, your book isn’t that great, or you would wait in line to deliver it to me, because you know the contents could do me some good. I won’t be checking that one out.

From John Terry:

As far as I know, both UPS and FedEx both have to check their packages also. This requirement was implemented by the FAA, not the Postal Svc. So if you have a gripe, take it to the FAA. I know that it is a stupid requirement, because I have to work the targeted mail every night at the facility I work at. Yes I am a Postal employee and I don’t like it anymore than you. But please give us a break, because we’re not the only ones doing it. You might mention that in a future column. Thanks!

Gee, guys. I’m all for necessary security measures and, by and large, a fan of the USPS. But somebody is not thinking. Either of the suggestions I made would in no way have prevented 17-ounce packages from being examined and X-rayed just as now. And one of the two suggestions would have allowed the USPS to know with 100% as much certainty as today who mailed a particular package — because to get the numbered “registered stamps” you’d have to go to the post office in person, show government ID, get fingerprinted — whatever, I don’t care — but then walk away with 5 or 10 or 20 of these, so you’d only have to go to the post office and stand in line once in a while instead of every damn time you want to mail something that weighed more than a pound.

Richard Moore points out why it can pay to put up with the lines at the post office:

Well, I mailed 15 books and saved $12 each by using USPS rather than FedEx. I invested that $180 in Microsoft right after the Windows 95 crash and tripled it to $540. Then took that money and invested in Intel after the pentium math glitch and doubled it to $1,080. Invested that on your advice in FedEx and doubled it to $2,160. So the delay at the post office was 15 minutes for a net pay rate of $8,640/hour. Based on a 2080 hour work-year, that is a net annual pay of nearly $18 million. Where else could you get such great pay???? Perhaps the US Mail looks just a bit better now!!!!!!!!

Gosh, that’s right. Looked at this way, think how lucrative it would be to have to take all mail in person to the post office.

I am not a cyclist (I get too interested in what I’m reading or watching on TV, and before you know it, I’ve dismounted), but it’s worth pointing out that — in the great sweep of things — my investing life has now basically consisted of two 15- or 16-year chunks. There was 1966 through 1982, when the Dow first pierced the 1000 mark (intraday) in 1966, and 16 years later, when it was at 777 in August of 1982 — for a net 16-year gain (not counting dividends, which were a lot higher back then) of minus 22%. And there was 1982 to this past summer, when the Dow rose from 777 to 8300, roughly plus 1000%.

One is almost tempted to think in terms of ebb and flow. Or to observe that this second, vastly preferable 16 years were double what you might normally expect of the market, more or less, simply making up for the prior 16. Like a long string of mostly heads after a long string of mostly tails.

Perhaps not an entirely inapt analogy, since the next 16 coin tosses are mathematically certain to be unaffected by the previous 16. (If I have flipped an astonishing 16 heads in a row, and I’m really “due” to flip tails, I will nonetheless be no more likely to flip tails on the 17th toss than heads.) And yet we are not just flipping coins here, and having now done our catch-up, it’s unlikely to me we will have another 16 years of double-barreled performance.

If things keep soaring, as they might, we’d be headed for trouble. Bubbles burst. Look what’s happened to Japan since 1990. If we plod along at what to some, spoiled by the last 16 years, will seem a very tepid pace, that would be swell. And if we get spooked, or some unfavorable things happen (inflation, labor strife, political unrest, Quayle in ’00 — the double-zero president), it could get ugly.

I don’t know where we’re headed, other than, very generally, over the long-term, UP. But I think these last 16 years have been extraordinary in part because they were catching up. The disinflationary 16 following the inflationary 16, is largely what it amounts to. A period of gradually falling long-term interest rates after a period of rising ones.

Happily, interest rates have room to fall further. Sadly, from the point of view of a turbo-charged stock market, not that much further.

Happy Halloween. I hate Halloween. I have always hated Halloween. But don’t let that spoil your fun. I was dressed as a ghost — an old sheet with a hole in it, suggesting perhaps that my mother cared as little about Halloween as I now do — sitting in the back of a station wagon loaded with kids. I think the tailgate must have been down (at 5, I was not into auto safety, let alone auto insurance reform, as I am now), and when the car started forward, I rolled off the tailgate onto the dirt road.

I’d like to tell you that, resourcefully, I reached into my sheet, whipped out a cell phone, and called a personal injury attorney. Instead, dazed but unhurt (but certainly I could have claimed emotional distress) I waited for the car to back up and retrieve me, and have hated Halloween ever since.

Actually, I’m not sure the car thing had much to do with my hating it. I’m one of those people who’s insecure about what he wears and thus goes for the khakis, Oxford button-down shirt and blue blazer most of the time, which wins no awards on Halloween.

I did have a brief period of years when, for one reason and another, I felt the need to go out in New York on Halloween and managed, finally, to find something (which I reused year after year) I felt comfortable with. I’d put on my tux . . . (Tuxedo renters, here’s a tip: next time you rent a tux you like, buy it rather than return it — just be sure it’s a classic style that never goes out of fashion and work out the price in advance with the rental company. Not only will you save time and hassle that once every year or two that you need it, you will also realize a terrific return on your investment. Buy it for $200, say, and realize a 40% tax-free dividend each time you don’t have to pay $80 to rent one. And, yes, in case it’s a brand new one you’d prefer to buy, Men’s Suits does sell tuxes.) . . . and then don a cheap dime-store pig mask which I had specially enhanced with a press-on dollar sign on the snout. I was, I explained to all the disheveled denizens of the night, a capitalist pig.

Want to do something to keep the economy rolling and this bull market alive? Call your senators and congressperson, as mentioned yesterday, and urge them to renew the president’s fast-track negotiating authority.

Trade wars brought on the Depression; freer trade has helped our economy boom. We are little more than 4% of the world’s population with some of the world’s very best products. The more freely we can trade with the other 96% of the world, the better we (and they) will do — and the greater the variety and the lower the cost of the items we get to consume ourselves.

So fast-track — which lets the administration negotiate credibly, subject to an all-or-none, up-or-down vote in Congress — is something every president since Nixon, Republican and Democrat, has favored and had, and something that has served us well. Yet it’s something “the special interests” [cue the melodramatic villain music] are doing a very good job of derailing. Certain specific industries fear trade agreements could hurt — and you can’t blame them for lobbying against fast-track. But for the country as a whole, the effect of trade agreements is very positive.

Yes (to take one example I heard recently), NAFTA cost 50,000 auto industry jobs in Michigan. But in the same time period, Michigan gained 782,000 other jobs! (I haven’t double-checked the figures, but the gist, if not the footnotes, ring true to my ear.)

The next few days are critical. Congress is itching to adjourn, and if they don’t pass fast-track next week, it could be three years before they do, for a variety of political reasons. Not the end of the world, and maybe not the end of the bull market. But why shoot ourselves in the foot? If the president’s people negotiate agreements that don’t make sense, Congress will still have a chance to veto them . . . but all-or-none, as a package, which makes it harder for narrow interests to prevail.

Opposition comes from both Democrats and Republicans. It is winnable, but not if people fail to get energized and send faxes and FedEx packages and call. Just say: “Yes on fast-track!” Trust me: they’ll know. (Needless to say, you are more than welcome to reprint this comment and send it along with your own.)

You heard it on the radio or from a friend at work. Here’s how I knew the market was “crashing” Monday. I was in a lead-lined hotel ballroom . . . well, OK, maybe not lead-lined, but the cell phone wouldn’t work . . . and someone was introducing the president, who was there to speak to what’s known as the Democratic Leadership Council — the group of democrats currently chaired by Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut. There were hundreds of people in the audience (funny how the president can fill a room), and when the introducer got to the part about “thirteen million new jobs, low inflation, low interest rates, a record stock market” — I saw the president lean to DLC founder Al From and make a wry comment.

I’m no lip-reader, but it was apparent he was saying something like, “not today, it ain’t,” or some such. I figured the market was down at least 300 points.

Leaving the ballroom of the Omni Shoreham after the president’s excellent speech, and panels on the importance of his fast-track trade negotiating authority now threatened in Congress (call your congressperson!) and the importance of improving public education (call for more charter schools!), I made my way to the pay phones, which were packed, and — giving up on that — to the room marked Gentlemen. It was packed, too.

The Omni is a nice old hotel, and in the room marked Gentlemen was an attendant flooded at that moment with business, playing the room like a cross between an old railroad porter and a performer at the Improv. “Yes, sir!” he announced to the crowd. “Welcome to the only place in this city where anyone knows what he’s doing.”

Eventually I got the word that the circuit breakers (brakers, really, when you think about it) had kicked in, and I can’t say I was feeling very bad about it, except for one thing.

(I wasn’t feeling very bad because no healthy market goes straight up; because the circuit breakers were a good idea that would give people time to think; because some people who have no business being in the market might be sufficiently scared by this mild jolt to get out; and because while I had clearly lost some paper profits like everyone else, I had also made some paper profits on my shorts — and I tend to see the bright side of anything. It’s just an annoying habit I have.)

The one thing that did have me feeling bad — anxious — vaguely guilty — was the nagging suspicion that it was all my fault.

You see, the last time this happened, October 19, 1987, when the market dropped that famous 508 points, I was in Detroit on a book tour, grinning like an idiot on the cover of a book called The Only OTHER Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need (don’t bother: out of print). The book actually tacked of the possibility of a one-day 500-point drop and suggested the market was cruisin’ for a bruisin’, though that was not by any means its main focus.

Anyway, ten years later almost to the day — last Thursday, to be specific — I was back “in Detroit” with another book about money (bother! bother! please, bother!), again grinning like an idiot (and again concerned by the height of the market, though this was not by any means the book’s focus). I was “in Detroit” in quotes because I was actually in Washington. But this was the day of my two live Detroit radio “phoners,” where one is, in every respect except reality, in Detroit. And down the market plunged 186 points . . . followed by 130 and change Friday . . . followed by Monday.

Call it coincidence if you like. But I’m still feeling vaguely responsible.

As for the Big Picture, it seems to me two things are at work here. The first is that the market was too high, the gains too easy, the psychology too complacent. And if the bounce-back becomes a snapback and all investors learn from this is heightened certainty that all declines are simply buying opportunities, and that the market will never really hurt them, then we might have a worse problem someplace down the road.

The second, though, is that most rational indicators are great. Inflation and interest rates — key factors in our prosperity — really are low, with little sign of a strong upsurge soon (though the tight labor market should not be totally discounted, and one day oil demand might again exceed oil supply . . . ). So that’s very good. And free trade (especially if you CALL YOUR CONGRESSPERSON TO URGE PASSAGE OF THE FAST-TRACK NEGOTIATING AUTHORITY EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE NIXON, I think it is, HAS HAD) is a big positive, as is our tremendous technological progress.

So there’s a lot to be excited about, just as there was last week. The difference is that the market, while perhaps still a good bit ahead of itself, offers better value than we’ve seen in . . . well, months. (Weren’t we just cheering ecstatically a few months ago when it got this high?) The real bargains, if you’re brave and you know what you’re doing, may now be in Asia.

One reason some neophyte investors are relatively unworried about the possibility of falling stock prices is, as a few have told me, that’s what they’re paying the mutual fund manager to do — spy the future and sell before prices fall too much.

What they don’t understand is this simple fact: most mutual funds are always pretty close to fully invested in stocks. It’s rare for an equity fund to have less than 90% of its assets invested in the market. So if the market drops 40%, so, in all likelihood, will the fund. (Well, conservative "low-beta" funds will drop less, aggressive "high-beta" funds will drop more.)

If you think the market is overpriced, it’s your job to pull out of the fund, not the fund’s job to pull out of the market.

Having said that, of course, there are lots of reasons not to hop in and out of funds, especially in a taxable account. Stock market money should be long-term money; 25% and 40% dips, should they occur (and they always used to) are just part of the game. If you’re in it for the long term, it’s usually futile or counterproductive to try to "time the market."

Still, with the U.S. market having tripled or so in the last five years, it wouldn’t be imprudent, especially within tax-free accounts, to switch a bit of money into an overseas index fund that invests in a market, like Asia, that’s gone on sale.

Two questions on deflation. The first, in appropriately deflated lower case:

w. buffett, j. templeton, and other well-respected investors are rumored to be buying us bonds. is the possibility of deflation, similar to the asian situation, the reason? do you think such a deflation is likely? if so, what might trigger it? are you buying bonds? thanks jbrimi

The second, from Professor Dana Dlott:

Have you ever given any thought to deflation? My concern stems from several events. First, a few years ago I bought a house a bit more expensive than I can afford. I reasoned, as do millions, with a little bit of inflation, I am in great shape.

About that time I read a biography of William Jennings Bryan. You may remember from history about the famous “Cross of Gold” speech and the “free-silver” movement. It was never explained to me very well in US History. This was during a period of deflation, which was common in the 18th and 19th centuries. The probable reason for deflation was the economy was expanding rapidly but the money supply, based on gold, was not. The ravages of deflation were terrible. If you owned a farm and had a mortgage, pretty soon the value of the farm dropped below your mortgage debt, which triggered the banks to foreclose. You were just working hard, farming and making money, and BAM there went the farm. It didn’t help the banks any, either, to have all this bad debt and farm land.

The “free-silver” movement was about using silver for coinage, to expand the money supply to counter this deflation. The “Cross of Gold” speech was about how the Wall Streeters and Washingtonians were crucifying the average person by keeping to the gold standard.

I wasn’t really worried about deflation because I reasoned the government could just print more money. But recent events have me worried again. First I heard an interview with one of the Federal Reserve Governors. He said to the Federal Reserve Board, the desired rate of inflation was zero. That was a bit of a shock. I was taught a little bit of inflation was good because people like getting annual raises and the money supply should expand a bit. If the targeted inflation rate is actually ZERO, then errors in this targeting could easily lead to deflation.

In addition, now I am reading the Producer Price Index has fallen for the 7th straight month. [This e-mail came in late August.]

Any comments or insights? Am I crazy to worry about deflation? Nobody else seems to worry about it, or even mention it. It would be disastrous for a lot of people in debt.

Well, my first comment and insight on deflation is that, yep, it would be disastrous for a lot of people in debt.

My second thought is that you can’t push effectively on a string, which is why lowering interest rates or printing more money can’t necessarily be counted on to stave off deflation. Interest rates in Japan have long been close to zero, but if people and businesses are scared to borrow, you can’t force them to. And printing more money doesn’t necessarily bid up prices because of what’s known as the “velocity of money.” The Fed can inflate the money supply by purchasing Treasury securities and “paying” for them with new out-of-thin-air dollars it’s printed. (These days, a lot of the “printing” would involve nothing more than electronic ledger entries.) But the behavior of individuals and consumers can counter that if they choose to sit on more of their money rather than spend it — to keep higher checking and savings account balances, and use new cash to pay down debt rather than bid up the prices of Cabbage Patch dolls. The velocity of money — the speed with which dollars fly around the system and the amount of transactional work each dollar does — slows down.

That said, I think deflation is unlikely and that, yes, the Fed’s tools are potent indeed. The world’s learned a lot since, and from, the Depression, most particularly about the money supply and the importance of avoiding trade wars.

(Trade wars are one thing that could trigger deflation. Gloom and doom — we are emotional animals, after all — are another. Picture a period of falling profits brought on by global overcapacity, layoffs, increasing competition for work leading to underbidding, people getting scared and selling at any price to pay off their debts and raise some cash, which leads to lower stock prices and more gloom and, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: “All we have to fear is fear itself.” So it certainly could happen. And it’s wise to have some of one’s money in a deflation hedge like Treasury bonds. But I, for one, being an optimist, don’t see this as likely.)

The Fed must always talk about a sound dollar and shooting for zero inflation. This gives people confidence in the future and reason to make the kinds of long-term arrangements and investments that build the future. Because interest rates sit on top of inflation expectations, this kind of talk from the Fed keeps interest rates low.

People forget: From 1880 to 1965, there was no such thing in this country as a home mortgage over 6%. Treasury bonds yielded from 1% to 3%.

With the prime rate at 8.5% and long-term Treasuries yielding a bit above 6%, the Fed has tremendous room to stimulate the economy with lower rates if deflation fears became more widespread.

In an ideal world, the Fed would have people a little worried about inflation and a little worried about deflation, but basically confident that the dollar will be sound, prices stable, and that the Fed will and can do whatever’s required to keep it that way. And, yes, I suspect the Fed would be secretly pleased with a wisp of inflation — a sort of hidden psychological/social lubricant that keeps people happy — so long as they were publicly perceived to be fighting it.

So, finally, what about buying bonds? If Buffett and others are, it would be because it’s so much more attractive to earn 6% on your money for a year or two than, say, nothing — let alone to lose 25%. Now, you may say the U.S. stock market couldn’t possibly go down 25% (or 40% or 60%), and you may be right. I still own lots of stocks for which I have high hopes, too. But for the market to fall 25% from 8000 would bring the Dow back to 6000, a level so impossibly high it was barely dreamed of by most people two or three years ago.

Clearly, though, Warren Buffett et al. are not selling all their stocks to go into bonds, and neither should most of you.

(Nor need you buy 30-year bonds, which expose you to interest-rate risk. Unless you do want to make an aggressive bet on falling interest rates — in which case you should consider long-term zero-coupon bonds to get the most oomph from your bet — it’s probably wisest for most people to stick to Treasuries that are 3-5 years from maturity. You’ll get almost as high a return on your money with a lot less interest-rate risk.)

The future is bright, even if most mutual fund holders are likely to be deeply disappointed over the next decade, given the sort of annual returns they’ve been telling pollsters they expect to earn.

One last thing. Did you know that The Wizard of Oz was actually about William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold (follow the yellow brick road) and such? I was astounded to learn this, but as I hope to elaborate for you one of these days — unlike, say, the Procter & Gamble Satan thing — it appears to be real.

I actually have nothing against America Online. On balance, I think it’s pretty great. But there are those who do have a nit or two to pick. Well, revenge is at hand. Not that AOL is likely to leave this loophole open long after reading this (which you will also find I’ve used as my November column in WORTH). But “if you or anyone you know” has ever been annoyed by AOL, “I urge you to get pencil and paper ready,” as they say.

Here’s the deal. When you boot up AOL and get hit with that ad for AOL’s Visa card — which you have to click “OK” to get past — fake ’em out. Accept the offer. At least that’s what one rich friend of mine did.

When his no-annual-fee card came, he signed up for the “automatic pay” feature, which automatically debits his checking account at Chase at the last possible moment and pays off his balance. Then he took one of the “convenience checks” they sent — a convenient way to get yourself deeper in debt at the introductory rate of 5.9% for six months and 17.9% thereafter — and wrote it to himself for his $20,000 limit, depositing it to his interest-bearing checking account at Chase.

He’s got it down to a science by now. He deposits the check the day after the billing cycle ends, so it takes a month even to show up on his Visa bill, and then another month or so before, at the last moment, Chase automatically zaps the $20,000 back to Visa, paying his balance in full before any interest begins to accrue. (With most cash advances and convenience checks, interest begins to accrue right away. Not so, as of this writing, with the AOL Visa card.) Then he writes himself another check for $20,000 and starts all over again.

As a result, at no cost whatever, he gets:

• The interest on $20,000 that he keeps in his Chase account more or less all year — about $1,000 worth.

• A waiver on the $25 a month Chase would charge for his account if he didn’t maintain a high average balance — worth another $300 a year.

• Some 20,000 “points” every two months redeemable for time on AOL at a penny a point — 10 free months (unless they hunt him down like a dog and find some excuse for canceling his account, but I’d hate to see their legal bills if they did).

I must tell you I sympathize with AOL in this. Whatever they’ve done wrong, they’ve done a lot right for $20 a month. But in my friend’s case, they’re more or less paying him $1,300 a year to use the service — and giving it to him free for what should soon amount to the end of time.

As so often happens in this space, the really good stuff comes from you. The comment I wrote about my frustrating credit card experience — being charged a $20 fee for being 3 days late on a $55 payment, and then being chastised by the customer service rep, to boot — elicited lots of feedback, a sampling of which I shared yesterday. But near the end of this stream of messages came one from a person I’ll call Deep Plastic who really seems to know. It seems GM isn’t the company that issues or services the GM Visa card. Deep Plastic works for the company that does:

I read with a great deal of interest your experience with the GM Gold Card. As an employee of Household Credit Services (the bank that underwrites your GM Gold Card), I can assure you that you are not alone in your “Credit Card Billing Rage.”

In 1996, telephone representatives waived more than $40 million dollars in late fees – income that flows directly to the bottom line. As a result, Household now insists that at least one of the following four criteria be met in order to waive late fees:

1. You must indicate in your original conversation that you never received a statement the previous month, or;

2. You must have at least $2,500 in purchases within the previous 3 billing cycles, or;

3. You must have accrued at least $30.00 in finance charges within the previous 3 billing cycles, or;

4. Your account must have been opened within the last 6 months.

If none of the criteria are met, the reps generally are not allowed to waive the late fee. Essentially, your account is considered unprofitable, and as such, Household isn’t too concerned if you threaten to close your account.

As a courtesy to you, I am going to credit your account for the late fee. You will see a credit on your next month’s statement. In exchange, I will ask that you please let your readers know that it isn’t GM who manages the credit card. They only handle the rebate points. All credit card functions are handled by Household. I own GM stock, and I’m tired of the bad rap GM gets for the stupid policies of Household. (I say stupid, because it takes Household approximately 4 days to post a payment to an account once the payment is received. Household does not back-date the payment, therefore a late fee is assessed even though 90% of the time they had the payment on time). In Household’s defense, they have added so many new portfolios in the last couple of years, their systems are just simply overwhelmed.

Also, in the event you use any of the information here, please do not use my name or E-mail address. I am attempting to put my husband through grad school, and I really need the job!

Other credit cards that Household manages very badly: the Ameritech Complete Card, the Ameritech Platinum Card, the Pacific Bell Savings Card, and the U.S. West Savings Card.

Tomorrow: Getting AOL to Pay YOU