10 States That Are Maxxed Out on Credit Cards

Finance.yahoo.com


Here are the top 10 states with the highest bankcard utilization ratios.

10. Louisiana
Average Balance: $3,503
Average Limit: $16,257
Average Utilization: 21.55%

Louisiana comes in last on our list, with a decently low average balance per consumer. The Bayou state could benefit from asking their credit card issuers to up their limits though — a tactic that can lower your utilization without forcing you to cut spending.

9. Texas
Average Balance: $4,072
Average Limit: $18,857
Average Utilization: 21.59%

The saying goes that “everything’s bigger in Texas” and that must be true of the state’s credit cards too, as the Lone Star state has the highest average limit of all of the states on our list. The high credit limit doesn’t mean that Texans aren’t spending though, as they also have the third highest balance.

8. South Carolina
Average Balance: $3,786
Average Limit: $17,351
Average Utilization: 21.82%

7. Oklahoma
Average Balance: $3,579
Average Limit: $16,396
Average Utilization: 21.83%

6. Arkansas
Average Balance: $3,469
Average Limit: $15,751
Average Utilization: 22.02%

Arkansas takes the prize for lowest average balance of any state that made our list. Perhaps residents of the Natural state could use a new credit card, which can add to their overall limit and decrease their utilization ratio.

5. Nevada
Average Balance: $3,999
Average Limit: $18,047
Average Utilization: 22.16%

4. Alabama
Average Balance: $3,618
Average Limit: $16,085
Average Utilization: 22.49%

3. Georgia
Average Balance: $4,246
Average Limit: $18,520
Average Utilization: 22.93%

Though Texas took the highest average limit of all the states on our list, Georgia wasn’t far behind. The state could try to skim more money off their monthly expenses to cut their utilization ratio.

2. Mississippi
Average Balance: $3,384
Average Limit: $14,644
Average Utilization: 23.11%

Though this state comes in second in our rankings, its residents aren’t charging more dollars, on average, than any other state on our list. The high utilization ratio in Mississippi is due primarily to the fact that its average limit per consumer is very low.

1. Alaska
Average Balance: $4,563
Average Limit: $16,453
Average Utilization: 27.73%

While all of the other states in our rankings stayed below a 25% utilization ratio, Alaska broke that barrier. This should come as no surprise to those who pay attention to Alaskans’ personal finances. The 49th state has recently topped lists of the highest credit card balances and highest revolving account debt. Read more >>

White House website deluged with secession petitions from 20 states

How would Old Glory look with 30 stars instead of 50? As far-fetched as it may sound, the White House might soon be forced by its own rules to examine the question.

On Nov.7, the day after President Barack Obama was re-elected, the White House’s website received a petition asking the administration to allow Louisiana to secede.

If 25,000 people sign the petition by Dec. 7, it will “require a response” from the Obama administration, according to published rules of the White House’s online “We the People” program.

The Louisiana petition has collected more than 12,300 signatures in four days. A separate effort from Texas has 15,400 supporters. Similar petitions from 18 other states began arriving Nov. 9, bringing the total — for the moment — to 20. Read more >>

USM, Tulane scientists say oil now in Gulf of Mexico food chain

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Think of what this means. What do you think will happen once the word spreads, and people begin to realize that all sea life in the entire Gulf region is toxic. You can expect a huge propaganda campaign designed to discredit reports of oil in the GOM food chain.

Sun Herald

OCEAN SPRINGS -- Scientists at The University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University have found oil in the postlarvae of blue crabs entering coastal marshes along the Gulf Coast signaling that oil may be entering estuarine food chains.

Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, has found droplets of hydrocarbons or oil, in blue crab and fiddler crab larvae. According to Perry, the oil appears to be trapped between the hard, outer shell of the crab and its inner skin.

“I’ve been sampling in Mississippi coastal waters for 42 years and I have never seen this,” declared Perry. “My guess is that the crab picked up this oil offshore while in the megalopal (postlarval) stage and brought the oil with it when it came back to the marsh."

Tulane researcher, Dr. Caz Taylor has found orange-colored droplets in megalopae as far east as Pensacola, FL and as far west as Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana, but analysis of these droplets has not been completed.

Perry sent samples to an independent lab in Florida which confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons. While the oil was tested, it was not specifically analyzed for the markers that would pinpoint it to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. However, Perry believes it is no coincidence that the timing of the oil spill matches finding oil in the crab. The Tulane samples are currently being analyzed at their laboratory and Perry and Taylor both cautioned that additional testing will be required to relate the oil to the recent spill.

Blue crabs are more than just a favorite food for humans; they are also a favorite food of a host of fish species that live in the marsh. Speckled trout and red fish feed heavily on the crustaceans. The food chain is now affected because whatever eats the crab will be affected, and so on.

Besides finding oil in the body of the crab, Perry’s group has begun seeing small fish with oil clinging to their bodies. “Oil on the fins decreases mobility and makes these fish easy prey for other species. This is yet another example of oil being incorporated into the food chain,” she added.

Oil cleanup workers stay in banned formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers

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The FEMA trailers had such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again. But that hasn't stopped a contracting firm in Louisiana from selling the banned FEMA trailers to oil cleanup workers for housing.

“These are perfectly good trailers,” Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said, adding that he has leased land in and around Venice for 40 more trailers that are being delivered from Texas in the coming weeks. “Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It’s not a big deal.”

“It stunk to high heaven,” said Thomas J. Sparks, a logistics coordinator for the Marine Spill Response Corporation, as he stood in front of the FEMA trailer that was provided to him by a company working with his firm. Mr. Sparks said the fumes in the trailer from formaldehyde, a widely used chemical in building materials like particle board, were so strong that he had asked his employer to provide him with a non-FEMA trailer.

From msnbc News:

The trailers — which are being resold for $2,500 and up — started down their road to infamy after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when FEMA officials ordered nearly $2.7 billion worth of trailers and mobile homes to house victims of the storm.

Within months, some of these residents began complaining about breathing problems and burning eyes, noses and throats. One man who had complained about fumes was found dead in his trailer in June 2006.

Federal officials later discovered that formaldehyde — an industrial chemical that can cause nasal cancer, aggravates respiratory problems and may be linked to leukemia — was present in many of these housing units in amounts that exceeded federal limits. Scientists have since concluded that the high levels of formaldehyde found in the trailers probably resulted from cheap wood and poor ventilation. FEMA has produced other models and later batches of the trailers that do not have the health risks that the trailers built for Hurricane Katrina victims did.

But federal officials have struggled to figure out what to do with the contaminated trailers, which have cost nearly $130 million a year to store and maintain, according to federal records. As a result, the government decided to sell the trailers in 2006. The trailers have found a ready market in the gulf.

These trailers should have been destroyed.

Federal records indicate that of the hundreds of companies and individuals who have bought the trailers, dozens are in Louisiana. They include Henderson Auctions, which bought 23,636 units for $18 million, and Kite Brothers RV, which bought 6,511 mobile homes and travel trailers for $16 million.

Anger on the bayou is palpable

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winonadailynews
"The whole place is full of oil."
Barataria estuary now ground zero in oil spill
The meandering sand dunes and bird islands of Barataria Bay have become the epicenter of the environmental disaster spewing from BP's offshore well. And fishermen are bitter.

Oil-caked birds, stranded sea turtles, globs of gooey brown crude on beaches, coated crabs and mats of tar have been found throughout the inlets and mangroves that dot the bay. The oil has smothered this watery otherworld with a rainbow sheen and is threatening the complex web of wetlands, marshes and bayous that make up this national treasure.

Everything from crabbing to bait fishing is shutting down, and the anger on the bayou is palpable.

"It's scary, you know, man," marine mechanic Jimmy Howard said from his ramshackle and hurricane-battered fishing shack, a cigar stub stuffed in his mouth. "I see them doing what they can, you know. All the boats going out, all the boom. I'm hoping they can contain it."

Barataria teems with wildlife, including alligators, bullfrogs, bald eagles and migratory birds from the Caribbean and South America. There are even Louisiana black bears in the upper basin's hardwood forests.

Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, oyster and shrimp boats plowed through these productive bays as fishermen snapped up speckled trout and redfish within minutes of casting their lines.

Now it resembles an environmental war zone. Many of the bay's nesting islands for birds are girded by oil containment boom, and crews in white disposable protective suits change out coils of absorbents to soak up the sticky mess.

"The whole place is full of oil," said fishing guide Dave Marino. "This is some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil's coming in just wave after wave. It's hard to stomach, it really is."

At the entrance to Barataria, dredges and bulldozers are building sand berms on barrier islands to intercept the advancing oil. National Guard helicopters drop sandbags into breaches smashed through the islands by hurricanes, and local officials are moving in barges to use as makeshift barriers.

Shrimp boats have been enlisted in the skimming effort _ the Coast Guard says about 2,450 barrels of oily water have been picked up. But it's bittersweet work for the shrimpers, whose fishing grounds have been shut down. More...