HEARD ON THE STREET | December 2, 2012, 7:55 p.m. ET
Overheard
Talk about the perils of credit-card lending, and Capital One (COF) won't mind defending itself. Say its ads feature vikings, and it gets hot under the collar.
Satirical newspaper the Onion, which calls itself "America's Finest News Source," wrote Thursday that "no one at Capital One Financial Corporation can precisely recall why its ads center around a merry group of cost-conscious Vikings."
Guys: They're Visigoths. Capital One posted on Twitter: "No wonder no one could remember, you were asking about the wrong nomadic tribe."
When asked, the Onion retorted: "The Onion has no comment on Capitol [sic] One Bank's inability to understand its own admittedly puzzling advertising campaign. We respect the privacy of their company as they attempt to sort it all out."
To sort things out, vikings, according to Wikipedia, "were the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored." Perhaps not the lineup of verbs Capital One sees fit for unsecured borrowers. Visigoths are a Germanic tripe of Goths who, according to Wikipedia, "famously sacked Rome in 410 AD." Much better, no doubt.
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U.S. taxpayers are still on the hook for $137 billion used to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But with the mortgage giants now posting profits, some in Congress see them as piggy banks.
The House of Representatives Friday passed a bill to allow foreign students graduating from a U.S. university with degrees in science and technology to obtain green cards. While the bill isn't likely to get far, one aspect has rankled some groups.
Namely, parts of it would be funded using an increase in the fee Fannie and Freddie charge to guarantee mortgages. This wouldn't be the first time Congress used the "G-fees" as a revenue source. In late 2011, the fees were raised to help pay for the payroll-tax-cut extension.
Washington, it seems, can get blood out of a stone.
A version of this article appeared December 3, 2012, on page C8 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Overheard. |
