Nor are heavyweights the only ones who have to cope with discomfort, embarrassment, and/or difficulties when flying. The standard coach airline seat has just seventeen inches of space allotted to each passenger with the seats’ width, and very little legroom. Very tall flyers also have trouble squeezing into standard seats, especially when the passenger in front of them has decided to put down their seat back to recline. (Want to spark a war on an online forum without too much effort? Just ask, innocently, whether the space behind an airplane seat belongs to the person sitting in it – with regards to reclining – or the person behind it, who may want to use their tray table for a laptop, eating, or reading.) I myself don’t have an opinion on whether these policies are fair or should be changed. I’m merely here to offer a suggestion.

Passengers who are too tall or heavy to fly without purchasing an extra seat might do better to travel to their destination by car, if at all possible. This is both a financial and realistic suggestion. First of all, even the cheapest airplane seats get really expensive if you are having to buy two for a round-trip. Travelling by auto is almost always going to be more economical. Secondly, it might be more comfortable. I frankly think that it must be embarrassing for the poor passenger who has bought two seats, especially on a carrier like Southwest with open seating. Can you imagine someone asking you if the seat next to you is taken (as people tend to do on that airline), and you having to explain that it technically is, since you purchased both? Never mind the issue of people who might be right on the border of possibly being too heavy. Smith had, reportedly, travelled on Southwest in recent weeks with just one seat and without any airline personnel raising a stink. The decision as to whether someone is too “fat to fly” is left with the flight attendants, and is therefore quite arbitrary. If you think you will be fine, and then have a snitty steward(ess) telling you otherwise, you risk being ejected from your flight like Smith. Travelling by car is a surefire way to avoid these headaches. That’s in addition to the fact that you can pick your own music, and carry more luggage than just two dinky suitcases weighing less than fifty pounds apiece. (I actually think that more travelers of ALL sizes should consider car travel as opposed to flight, in terms of domestic leisure destinations. Why put up with being squeezed like cattle into an airborne metal tube, even if you are a skinny/normal size?)

Expect that your credit card issuer will be mailing you information about the new rules. This means that you must necessarily pay more attention to your mail. Don’t expect this mail to be particularly notated – it will probably come in a very ordinary-looking white envelope.

The new laws affect the disclosure of credit card information that affects consumers. It is meant to make our lives easier and to make credit card companies more responsible in their term disclosure. In reality, however, the law really just means that card companies will have to scramble for new ways to make money. This means that new fees are likely to become a normal part of life. After all, the law doesn’t impact fees. It does restrict banks from arbitrarily raising interest rates, and requires that customers be at least two months behind on their bill before they can be penalized. Credit card issuers are also now obliged to apply any payments over the minimum each month to the highest-interest balance on your card. Also, your bill must be mailed to you no less than three weeks before its due date.

All this consumerism has already begun to be balanced by an (un)healthy dose of negativity, however. Card companies have begun adding a slew of fees, as mentioned – inactivity fees for those who don’t charge enough on their cards annually, and annual fees for many customers who have never had to pay them. Existing fees, such as those penalties for going over your established card limit, are increasing to make them more lucrative for credit card companies. After all, banks have historically make the lion’s share of their profits from plastic fees – do you honestly think that the execs are going to sacrifice their bonuses just because of some pesky Congressional decision-making? The only good news is that banks are required to give you advance notice that these fees are coming, under the CARD Act’s terms. That’s why it is so very important that you pay attention to your mail to catch any communications from your bank. These notifications will take the form of a letter. Also pay close attention to your credit card statements in coming months, to make sure that your bank is following the rules and applying payments to your account correctly.

At the end of January, Toyota issues a recall of millions of its best-selling cars following news that the affected models had issues with accelerator pedals sticking and causing the cars to speed out of control. Hundreds of accidents and several deaths are being blamed on Toyota’s problematic gas pedals, and countless lawsuits have been filed in relation with the issue. Lee claimed at the time of his accident that he “was stepping on the brakes as hard as possible” at the time his car collided at a red light with the Oldmobile carrying thirty-three year old Javis Trice Adams, ten year old Javis Jr., and six year old Devyn Bolten. Lee, who had about one year of driving experience at the time, was coming back from church with his wife, daughter, father, and brother in the Camry when it started accelerating suddenly as Lee came down an exit ramp from the highway on which he had been driving. The car topped out at ninety miles per hour. Lee’s car was examined after the accident by a mechanic hired by the prosecution, and nothing was found to be wrong with the brakes. Lee was accused of mixing up the gas and the brakes, and convicted on a double charge of criminal vehicular homicide. The prosecutor on Lee’s case has stated that he no longer believes that Lee is guilty of the crime. The support from the victims’ family is also a strong factor going into a reconsideration of the case.

It’s interesting to note that Lee’s ’96 Camry was not one of the cars making an appearance on the recall list, but that several other owners of this same car have filed suit claiming that they have trouble with the gas pedals. There is enough compelling evidence that the older Camrys might be displaying the same issue that there’s a chance Lee’s case might be re-examined. The accident vehicle is still extant in a St. Paul impound lot, meaning that it’s possible the accelerator assembly could be examined. Lee’s attorney is planning on filing paperwork to have the car re-examined. In the meantime, Lee, who reportedly weeps every time the accident is discussed and longs to go home to his wife and four children, will remain behind bars.

The first? That the insurance policy you thought was a good choice for you and your family is only a good choice for your insurance agent. If you use the traditional kind of car insurance, bought through an agent, then you can expect that this person is steering you towards a policy that pays out the biggest amount of money to them for selling it to you. There are two types of so-called “contingent” commissions given to auto insurance agents by companies as a means of compensating them for sales. The first is a bonus for turning customers in the direction of a certain carrier. The second is profit-based commission, made when a customer doesn’t file a bunch of claims that cost the insurance company all kinds of money. Both types of commission are fraught with ethical potholes. Some agents working on “steering” commissions will push policies from certain companies in order to gain the largest commission possible, regardless of what’s in the best interests of the customer. Agents getting the second type of commissions might either delay the filing of insurance claims or discourage clients with minor accidents from filing them in order to not have these claims count against their customer record. As the customer, it cam be hard to tell whether your agent has ulterior motives. The best and only safeguard against getting taken is to use your common sense and “BS detector.” Make your agent explain their recommendations. Do they sound legitimate? Are their reasons logical?

The second thing your insurance company is likely not telling you is the extent to which they penalize young drivers. Almost everyone knows that drivers under the age of twenty-five pay much more for their insurance premiums, and that young males in particular seem to pay a tax for their age and gender. But you might not have realized the extent to which this pattern is carried out. The InsuranceRates.com website carried out a study last year of drivers in the state of New York. They found that drivers under the age of nineteen paid insurance rates one hundred percent higher than those of their fellow drivers aged sixty to seventy-four. On the average, it took three years of a clean driving history before newer drivers were able to catch any sort of break on their auto insurance. This is something that can’t be helped, since it is a standard policy throughout the insurance industry. Young drivers can keep their premiums as low as possible by driving legally and safely, and by picking “boring” cars that are unlikely to be flagged by insurers as hot rods. A select few insurers will also give discounts to drivers who have completed a certain defensive driving course.

The third secret of big insurance companies is this: your credit plays a HUGE impact in the determination of your auto premium: a much bigger role than you might have initially thought. It’s a well-established fact that consumers with poor credit tend to file more insurance claims. Maybe their financial irresponsibilities extend to their driving, or maybe it’s the fact that people with bad credit tend to not be able to afford to pay out of pocket for minor repairs to avoid an insurance claim. Regardless of the reason for the connection, the end result is indisputable: today, some ninety percent of all insurance underwriters use credit scoring in their underwriting. Your insurer doesn’t care whether you ended up with bad credit because of a tragedy (bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce, etc.), either. Have a sub-stellar FICO score? Expect to pay more for your insurance premiums, and maybe to even be denied by certain insurers.

The fourth dirty secret of car insurance companies is that their methods of determining consumer premiums are far from transparent. In fact, good luck ever getting to the bottom of these pricing standards. Pricing systems for auto insurance policies are complex at best, and downright Byzantine at worst. Take, for example, the trend towards geographic pricing. How else do you explain the fact that the average annual insurance premium costs about five hundred dollars less in Iowa than in the District of Columbia? Back in our parents’ driving days, car insurance customers used to be sorted into a series of pricing tiers that might consist of only four or five different levels. Nowadays, however, it is far from that simple. There are so many other factors that we know influence car insurance premiums, from homeownership and credit to past coverage and type of car driven. And these are only the factors that we know about. There are many, many variables to the equation, and every insurer out there interprets these values differently. The end result is the fact that the average consumer has very little hope of ever understanding why they received a certain quote for auto insurance coverage.

Secret five: the tremendous price you pay for your car having been in an accident. And I’m not talking about the cost of your deductible. Insurance companies promise all kinds of things about car repairs: how much the car will look and run like new, the trustworthiness of its mechanics, etc. But there’s an ugly fact that you cannot forget: no matter how good the repairs, your car will never be worth as much as it was before the accident. It doesn’t matter whether you were at fault. In the age of websites like Carfax.com, your vehicle’s unique history will follow it around no matter where it goes or how many thousands of miles it racks up. And, in the case of an accident, this history can resemble nothing so much as a bad smell following you around. If “the other guy’s” insurance company is paying for repairs to your car (because they caused the accident), you have the right to insist upon original manufacturer parts, as opposed to generic ones from a second party. But this doesn’t do much when it comes to recouping the value of a damaged car. The only consolation is that you can usually claim the lost value of a car on your taxes. This is the reason why it’s prudent to hire a post-repair inspector for your car after getting it fixed: you can double-check that the repairs were done competently, and get a sense for how much value was lost.

That topic leads me to dirty secrets numbers six and seven, which have to do with the value of totaled vehicles. Insurance companies are more willing to total your vehicle following a severe accident than you would think. The industry standard is to total a car when the cost of repairs would exceed seventy percent of the car’s value. But there are other factors to consider, such as whether any damage to the car’s frame has taken place. Damage to the structure of a vehicle can constitute a safety hazard if it is simply unbent and fixed up, so this could be grounds for a total as well. (If the damages to your car are not fundamental, you can contest your insurer’s decision to total your car.) But here’s the kicker: if your car is totaled, you can expect to not get nearly as much for it as you would expect or hope. You see, insurance companies don’t get their values from sources like Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds. Instead, they turn to proprietary databases to determine the value of a totaled car. You’ll never know what the database says, just what your insurer tells you. Luckily, you need not accept their first determination. You can contest a total determination if the difference between the insurer’s valuation and your own is less than one thousand dollars. You can consult sources like Edmunds or Auto Trader to get pricing on vehicles similar to yours, and present that to the insurer as evidence that the valuation was unfair. More than that, and you will need to go through the arbitration process with your own appraiser. Expect this to be a lengthy and frustrating affair.

The eighth dirty secret of insurers is this: they might just own your mechanic. Not simply pay their bills – own them outright. Insurance companies have direct-repair companies that they keep around to do the bulk of repairs needed for their customers, and this has been the prevailing trend in the insurance industry for a long time. And going with the in-house repair place has its benefits for insured drivers. You might get a discount on your deductible, and it is generally much more convenient. But there can be a deep penalty for this buddy-buddy attitude between your insurance company and your mechanic. Your insurance company might encourage the mechanic to take shortcuts on repairs so as to save the insurance company money, and generally give the insurer way too much control over the repair process. Keep in mind that you have a choice as to whether or not to use the repair shop recommended by your insurer. And consider forking over the cash for a post-repair inspection, to make sure your car was properly repaired.

The second-to-last secret is this: your loyalty means nothing, and actually might not be helping you at all. Many consumers will automatically renew their insurance policies on an annual basis, assuming that they have a good history with their insurer and would do best to stay where they are. But this is simply not true. Your insurance company is very unlikely to reward your loyalty, and changing circumstances can lead to a situation where a different insurer offers you a much better price. You can get online quotes easily from the biggest insurers, making it easy for you to comparison shop at least once a year. You should do this. In days when insurance companies use bizarre and esoteric pricing standards to determine the cost of your insurance, another company’s weirdo prices might serve you better than your current insurer’s. Don’t be afraid to look around!

But keep in mind the tenth secret while you are at it: that switching carriers TOO easily could get you in hot water and cost you a lot of money. If you stop paying your auto insurance premiums and let the policy get cancelled to jump ship for another company, the unpaid balance of your account will very likely get passed on to the credit bureaus and marked for nonpayment. That’s not to mention the fact that your new insurance company will now be able to see that you have a policy cancellation on your record, which is likely to send your new rate skyrocketing! To avoid the issue, get the proper documentation. Ask your current carrier for a policy cancellation form, and make sure the timing is right. Namely, assure that the ending date of your old policy coincides with the start date of your new one. If you play the insurance companies’ game, then you stand a chance of winning.

The advent of the Internet has made it much easier for people with bad credit to access lenders of all types (auto, mortgage, banking, etc.) that are willing to do business with them. The costs for this type of credit used to be borderline-prohibitive, but that isn’t even necessarily the case anymore. The interest rate for a bad-credit auto loan is still high with comparison to its prime rate cousins. But that doesn’t mean that your loan will carry a rate that you cannot afford at all. If you have any real property that you are able to provide as collateral on your loan, you might even be surprised at how affordable credit can be in your situation!

There’s a lot of competition in the field of financing auto loans for those customers with sub-stellar credit. Every individual lender will maintain its own set of criteria with regards to eligibility. These lenders tend to all offer quick decisions, and the number of competing financial outlets has made rates more competitive than ever before. You should look for the company that is currently offering you the best interest rate for your particular financial situation. But make sure you pay attention to the fine print. Some companies will charge you an application fee, which could drive up the cost of credit over a company with no application fee and perhaps a slightly higher rate. The monthly payment has to be something you can afford. A big part in determining what this amount will be is the term of the loan. A longer loan will generally give you a lower monthly payment, because the principle amount of your loan is being spread out over a longer repayment period. Regardless of what company you choose, the first rule is the same: read, read, read! You don’t want to get caught in a terrible bind because of a contract containing tricky terms that you didn’t notice before you signed it. For example, no bad-credit auto lender ever offers zero-percent interest without some MAJOR “ifs.” Inevitably, these conditions will end up costing you more than if you would have just paid the interest charges in the first place. Make sure you look for those clauses, and decide whether they are worth it for you.

Another part of how affordable your auto loan will ultimately be is one that is much more under your control than the interest rate. And this, of course, is what car you choose to buy. Not getting in over your head with a high auto loan bill is critical. After all, you are driving your car – your car should not be driving you! If you are struggling to pay your bills every month, then you DEFINTELY don’t want to be looking at very expensive cars that will increase your likelihood of not being able to pay off your loan. You should try to get the most car for your money, but keep your maximum purchase amount realistic. Don’t fall prey to the trap of falling in love with an expensive vehicle and believing that you will somehow make sacrifices to fit it into your budget! There are multiple calculators available online that can take your income and other monthly bills and give you a reasonable number for what you should be spending on a car. You also have to consider the costs of insuring your car, and the costs of maintenance – especially if you are going in the other direction and trying to save money by buying a clunker. To be very frank, how much would it suck to be paying a monthly bill for a car that has crapped out on you, and that you cannot afford to repair? ANY monthly payment is too high for a non-drivable vehicle!

The second rule of taking a poor-credit car loan is the same as the advice I’d give to anyone financing a car: pay your bill! If you are diligent about paying your monthly bill on time, your car payment could actually become something that HELPS your bad credit. Any bill that you are able to maintain is one that can boost your credit score, because it shows that you are able to take responsibility for an obligation. If you default on your auto loan, however, the results can be devastating. Your credit will get worse. And a bad credit auto lender is much less likely to give you a grace period before repossessing your vehicle, should you go delinquent on your loan. In this case, your lender could sue you for the amount you still owe, AND you’ll have no car! You don’t want that to happen. Make sure that when you get your loan, you take good care of it.

As someone with a poor credit score, you will necessarily be viewed as a higher repayment risk for your auto lender. This is a result of the same logic that makes people with good credit scores a low risk in the eyes of lenders. This risk level is determined by the information in your credit report. By knowing your own credit score and the information in your credit report, you stand a better chance of going into an auto loan knowing where you stand and what kinds of loans you are likely to be eligible for. Even those with poor credit need to make sure that the information in their credit report is complete and accurate! You’ll increase your chances of getting the best auto loan for you, whether prime or bad credit, if you stay on top of your game.

As reported by the American Bankers Association recently, just 3.15 percent of indirect auto loans (those financed through car dealerships, or anywhere other than a bank) were at least a month late in the last quarter of 2009. Just over two percent of bank-originated auto loans were late during the same time period. This is a huge improvement over the three months at the end of 2008, when indirect loans stood at 3.53 percent and direct loans rose over three percent. These numbers are still too high for the comfort of industry analysts. But there can be no doubt that they are indicative of an improvement, at least!

If you are at risk of falling behind on your auto loan, immediate action is of paramount importance. A delinquent auto loan can wreck your credit, and jeopardize your ability to get around every day. Most auto lenders will not come out and immediately repo your car after one month’s missed payment, but they have the right to under the terms if your loan contract. You should get in touch with your lender to discuss your options, which could include a loan modification.

But a tremendous amount of research has shown that attaining the age of majority does not automatically make a person ready to responsibly use plastic. College students and young adults are the group most likely to get into trouble as the result of irresponsible credit card use. It’s just a fact. And yet, this is the age when most adults have, up until now, attained their first credit card. Sallie Mae found that eighty-four percent of undergrads hold at least one piece of plastic, and contemporary research has found that the average coed has a few thousand dollars in credit card debt by the time they graduate. Only ten percent of survey respondents in a Money Management International (MMI) Back to School survey believe that students should be using credit cards while in school.

The lawmakers who wrote and approved the CARD Act obviously agreed. Overall, the law will make it much harder for collegians to obtain credit. There are several new provisions involved in the process. The first of which is that prospective credit card applicants younger than twenty-one must have a cosigner for all credit card applications, unless they have independent income great enough to sufficiently repay the debt. This will block almost all college students from independently obtaining plastic. Furthermore, the cosigner must approve any and all credit limit increases in writing while the primary applicant stays under the age of twenty-one.

Credit card companies will no longer be able to send unsolicited, prescreened card solicitations to consumers younger than twenty-one, either. Nor will they be allowed to give away promotional items as incentives to stir up credit card business on college campuses. This provision of the new law was written in direct response to the outrage over credit card issuers signing students up for credit cards with high interest rates and Byzantine term and conditions after tempting them with trinkets like coupons for free lunches, varsity t-shirts, and baseball caps. Card companies may set up tables on campus with the permission of colleges and universities, but they are barred from offering swag to applicants in exchange for completed and/or approved applications. Up until this point, credit card companies were a daily presence on college campuses, enticing students with the offer of free stuff. Freshman in particular would often get excited about these goodies, and recklessly apply for credit that they neither needed nor were able to use responsibly.

Colleges that do allow credit card issuers to hawk their wares on campus must provide financial literacy education to their students. Research has shown that this is knowledge sadly lacking in the young adult segment of the American population. Many young adults don’t understand the long-term consequences that irresponsible credit card use can have on their life, let alone complicated things like credit scoring, compound interest, or how to read and understand the information on a credit report.

On one hand, the CARD Act might be seen as taking some rights away from young adults. On the other, however, this law also will go a long way towards preventing a vulnerable consumer population from making bad financial decisions at a stage in their life when they are not equipped to handle the great responsibility and temptations of credit cards. With the requirement that these young consumers obtain the help of a cosigner before applying for credit, it’s possible that more financial education will take place at an important place: in the home. It’s unlikely that many parents and/or guardians will be willing to jeopardize their own carefully-cultivated credit score for a free-wheeling teenager with no concept of how to walk away from a decent sale at the mall. Hopefully, the implementation of the CARD Act will give rise to a generation of college-aged adults who use their credit a bit more responsibly than their forbearers, depriving greedy card companies of the chance to use them as their own personal money trees.

I read about a Citigroup pilot program that sounds quite promising. Under the terms, delinquent homeowners will be allowed to stay in their homes without payment for as long as half a year if they did not qualify for other mortgage rescue / modification measures. The condition is that they maintain the property in good condition. The article I read estimated that as many as twenty thousand homeowners in Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas could be eligible for the pilot. That number is not quite at the seven-figure estimate of how many homeowners will fall through the cracks in the next few years, but for a good number the program will provide a more “graceful” transition between the disaster of a failed mortgage and a new chapter on their lives. Homeowners will still have to pay utilities while in the home, but the bank will pay homeowners’ association fees and associated costs. And the homeowners will also get money towards moving costs.

The Citigroup initiative targets some of the biggest problems facing the banking industry at present with regards to foreclosures. The biggest one? Disgruntled homeowners trashing their homes at the point when their home loan goes into default, leaving the bank with an expensive and time-consuming mess to clean up. Also, the contemporary trend towards “strategic default” – homeowners with unwater obligations choosing to foreclose rather than to throw money away on an investment they can’t possibly hope to recoup any time in the foreseeable future – is making foreclosure rates spike again. Through this innovative program, Citigroup can gain some control back of how many homes enter the glutted housing market, and hope to maybe maintain some more value in these distressed properties. If successful, the program could ultimately help prevent another dip in home prices if it is replicated widely and a large amount of homes are kept from a massive crash all at the same time.

The move by Citigroup is a close ideological cousin of an initiative started a few months ago by the mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under which foreclosed homeowners could become renters of their own lost homes. Another parallel measure was the Making Homes Affordable act, or MHA. This program through the Treasury Department allotted as much as one thousand dollars to borrowers who sold their homes through a short sale. In these deals, lenders were supposed to forgive the difference between the selling value of the house and the outstanding mortgage.

Transactions through which homeowners voluntarily surrender their homes instead of being forced out through foreclosure are called “deed in lieu.” The Moody’s Economy firm estimates that deed in lieu real estate transactions will increase by around fifty percent this year, to around half a million transactions. Compare that to the estimated two million Americans who will likely lose their home this year, and you realize that it’s just a fraction. But at this point, almost anything is a welcome change from the relentless bad news that the American real estate market has been facing.

The governors of four states where Toyota holds operations (Bob Riley of Alabama, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Steven Beshear of Kentucky, and Haley Barbour of Mississippi) have asked lawmakers to intervene in what they call “unfortunate and unfair” media coverage of the Toyota recalls, and to consider all the jobs that are hanging in the balance if American consumer no longer want to buy these cars. The governors also suggested that lawmakers should reconsider their actions before they come down too harshly on Toyota, which faces accusations of not recalling the defective vehicles soon enough and not being transparent enough with regards to what was going on with the cars and trucks. The letter called Toyota a “valuable friend” of the domestic auto industry, and pointed out that, although Toyota is foreign, its tremendous domestic presence has made it “as thoroughly an American company as the so-called ‘domestic’ manufacturers” that were actually originated in the United States.

Toyota caused major waves in the news during the last week of January, when they recalled no less than eight of their best-selling models due to problems with sticking accelerator pedals. The Avalon, Camry, Corolla, Highlander, Matrix, RAV4, Sequoia, and Tundra were all affected by this recall, which was later expanded to include the Pontiac Vibe. Just this week, a second major recall implicated the best-selling hybrid vehicle the Prius as having malfunctioning brakes when used on uneven roads. This recall also affected a popular Lexus hybrid. The total number of affected vehicles is currently estimated at eight and a half million worldwide.

Toyota’s shares have sank in the wake of the recall news. One factor that undoubtedly amplified that effect was the announcement from U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that all Toyota owners driving an affected vehicle should “stop driving it” and bring it directly to the nearest Toyota dealership. LaHood almost immediately amended his impassioned announcement to say he meant only that drivers “in doubt” about their particular vehicle’s status should take the vehicle off the road. LaHood has led something of a one-man campaign against Toyota, accusing the global company of not responding quickly or effectively enough to the crisis.

For their part, the quartet of national governors accuse federal lawmakers of having a “conflict of interest” in the Toyota matter, given the current public ownership of domestic competitors Chrysler and General Motors after those companies fell into bankruptcy. The letter says that Toyota is being accused of many things, but nobody is focusing on how quickly the company addressed its problems, identified solutions to those problems, and then subsequently delivered the solutions to its thousands and thousands of dealers the world over. The letter cites the U.S. government as having a “huge stake” in Toyota’s competitors, and making untrue statements as a result of that bias.

To date, the Toyota company has not yet laid anyone off as a result of the controversy having to do with the recalls. The governors, however, seem concerned that this could become a possibility if the defamation of the Toyota name is allowed to go on for much longer. The Kentucky governor’s office reported that the company employs some eighty-five hundred people in that state, mostly at a Georgetown plan that makes Camrys. The two Toyota plants in Indiana announced that they would not cut any jobs, but that was before the bombshell of the Prius recall was dropped. And there’s concerns that the recalls could impact the planned opening of a Toyota plant in Tupelo, Mississippi, that was set to employ some two thousand people. Toyota also has manufacturing plants in West Virginia, Alabama and Texas, and co-operates another plant with General Motors in California.

The Obama administration has expressed optimism that Toyota will recover from the recall drama. The President referred to the company as “an extraordinary automaker for a very long time,” and stated his belief that this trend would continue well into the future. It’s true that Toyota’s popularity in this country is phenomenal. Up until recently, it had enjoyed the top amount of sales in the country as well as the best measured reputation for perceived quality and reliability. Last year, during the well-received “cash for clunkers” program, it was recorded that more old cars were traded for Toyotas than for any other auto maker’s vehicles.

Back in January, before the official recall was announced, the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to Toyota officials calling into question their assertion that badly-designed floor mats were to blame for gas pedals getting stuck and causing accidents in several new Toyota cars. The letter stated that it was “quite clear” that a greater malfunction was at work, and called for the manufacturer to address the issue. There is some controversy over the fact that government officials claim to have been aware of the problems with Toyota cars since spring of last year, when Toyota claims that it was not aware of the problem until late October 2009.

Subsequently, questions were raised about “Toyota’s understanding of the risks and the condition,” as the HECC put it in an open letter. Company CEO Akido Toyoda’s reticence in making a public appearance to discuss the issue and answer questions was also criticized heavily in the national press.

McCollum has been made a scapegoat of in the past days, stuck in the midst of his own attempt to handle his party’s internal scandals as an Attorney General and as many people consider to be the current frontrunner for the party’s gubernatorial candidate. That puts him in the position to be considered Florida’s unofficial Republican leader. But McCollum wants any investigation to wait until the GOP elects a new state chairman on the 20th of this month. He says that he shares everyone’s outrage on the issue, and will make sure that guilty parties are turned over to law enforcement and punished if any actual evidence of criminal wrongdoing is found. In the meantime, however, he says that he’d rather not be the one to take that step.

Many former Florida GOP members have stepped forward to give details of lavish parties given and extravagant spending committed by some of the biggest hitters in Florida politics. The party currently refuses to divulge how many of its members were given credit cards.