wesolows

Web site and tools are great, especially for managing CDs. Much better than most other internet-only banking operations in my experience (one of which actually makes me call them to close out a CD at maturity!).

Unfortunately the interest rates are very low, even relative to other dollar-denominated accounts. I like ING's Orange product but I'm not going to accept 2-3% when the money supply is growing at 200% per year. Remember, it doesn't matter whether banks are offering 1% or 6%, that gallon of milk you bought this week will still cost 10% more a year from now.

Now if ING offered a gold-denominated account at 0.5% interest, I'd put all my savings there in a heartbeat. Maybe someone from ING will read this and take their innovative products to the next level.

Supposing you get the 7.88% rate; what are you going to do with the funds that will provide a higher return? There aren't many investments (direct or portfolio) offering a risk/reward profile that would justify such an expensive loan. And if you're looking to make portfolio investments, your broker probably offers margin rates at least 100bp better than this.

Not worth it. I might think about it at 3% (as a reminder, the Treasury is paying about 1% on similar maturities, and they owe 3x their annual income while I owe nothing), but if the LC lenders want 8% they'll be limiting themselves to desperate people and their credit losses will reflect that.

There is little reason to keep more in a checking account than one needs for immediate transactions. For most people that means an average balance less than $2000, so even if your account pays nothing you're losing at most $30 a year. In practice my average balance is much lower than that, and in any case there are accounts out there with similar terms that pay more interest.

More generally, with dollar interest rates near zero, using the banking and fiat money system for anything more than convenience is folly. Keep your assets in gold so they don't lose value.