Interesting story on TheStreet.com today; we continue to love near monopolies... multiple ways to win here - as the "pooring of America" continues, cash strapped Americans will turn more to credit (before defaulting in some cases), and much of the rest of the world has yet to see their first credit card...Visa's strategy -- one shared by rival MasterCard MA -- of capitalizing on consumers' increasing reliance on plastic to pay for everyday purchases, rather than simply big-ticket items. Now, the two companies are looking to prepaid cards as another potential growth area, as they attempt to continue strong growth inside the U.S. and -- more important -- globally."The big vision is that ... people talk about prepaid in the same way they talk about credit and debit," says Elizabeth Buse, Visa's global head of product, in an interview with TheStreet.com. "If we're talking a few ...

Most of these items can be filed under the heading of "things the market doesn't care about as it races upward, trusting everything will be fine in 6 months" :) Myself, I am fascinated with the dichotomy between the real economy and the stock market economy; I believe in the coming decade the divergence could grow even larger as more money is concentrated in the upper classes of society and less profits are due to the US as each year passes. But to see it so early, is interesting and I think has to do more with the printing fest at the Fed. We'll end this post with a bright spot... if you live in Forth Worth, TX Real economy issues that don't matter to Wall Streeters Credit Crunch Issue #1: GE to Stop Financing Boats, and Motor Homes (ironically 2 things I think are excellent shorts) I went ...