Starting this week, MainStreet will scour the world of personal finance for news items that confound us due to their blatant lack of common sense. If you’ve got any suggestions, by all means, drop us a line.

1. Oh No You Didn’t, MoneyWatch.com!
We’d just like to note we didn’t wake up today and decide that we were going to throw down with another personal finance site, but this morning we read something on CBS’s MoneyWatch.com (Stock Quote: VIA) that really grinds our gears.

Jill Schlesinger, a.k.a. “The Financial Decoder,” a.k.a. “The Face of MoneyWatch,” posted a little piece called “Credit Card Reform Stinks for Responsible Consumers (aka ‘Deadbeats’),” in which she argues that the new credit card legislation is probably going to be really bad for responsible borrowers who don’t carry a balance.

Here’s the logic: The credit card industry generates the majority of its revenue from people who carry a balance, and are charged late and over-limit fees. The proposed rules limit that income stream through consumer protection, and the industry will be forced to make up the shortfall somewhere else. In other words, the "deadbeats" (that’s what the card industry calls people who don’t carry a balance) will have to pay more.

Ms. Schlesinger suggests the credit card companies might do any of the following to generate revenue:
1. Start charging annual fees.
2. Stop offering rewards programs.
3. Start charging interest immediately after a purchase has been made.

First of all, as both MSNBC’s Bob Sullivan and the Consumerist point out, Ms. Schlesinger’s argument is essentially a regurgitation of the credit card industry’s talking points. Beyond that, if you spend a minute thinking about her suggestion, you’ll find it makes no sense. If the credit cards charge an annual fee, don’t offer rewards and start charging interest immediately, there’s no reason for deadbeats to use the card. They will use debit cards instead, or they’ll use charge cards like American Express (Stock Quote: AXP), which require full payment at the end of every month and already require an annual fee.

But the worst part of Ms. Schlesinger’s post came in the comments section. A reader named S. Howard-Sarin wrote, “As someone with a functioning mailbox and a paycheck, I certainly feel the credit card industry offers *too much* credit! … if I could choose between a credit card with a $100 annual fee plus a guarantee of no rate changes, versus a free card with a floating rate -- I'd pick the annual fee.”

Ms. Schlesinger herself responds with the following: “Really? I'd rather let the dopes who are late-payers float my free and easy access to credit. Their stupidity funds my convenience.”

Spoken like a truly oblivious millionaire, and she seems to utterly miss the point of the legislation in question. The credit card industry has been generating billions and billions of dollars of revenue via often tricky and misleading practices. The reason why the “dopes” fund your convenience, Ms. Schlesinger, is because the deck has been stacked against them for many years. This legislation levels the playing field a bit—though not completely—and ultimately that may mean that the credit card business will no longer be the most profitable sector in banking. They’ll still make money, just not as much. So be it.

Ms. Schlesinger, perhaps, spends too much time in the world of Wall Street, and might be served by spending a bit more time down on Main Street, with us “dopes.”

2. A New Kind Of Child Abuse
We’re all for financial literacy (obviously), but on vacation? Disney (Stock Quote: DIS) recently announced that it’s partnered with T. Rowe Price (Stock Quote: TROW) to launch a new “entertainment experience” at Innoventions at Epcot Center. It’s called The Great Piggy Bank Adventure and it sounds just amazing:

Read More:   roundup