National Foundation for Credit Counseling - Get advice on mortgage and debt management
SCORE - Counselors to America's small businesses
CARFAX - Get a vehicle history report before buying a used car

Have you ever walked into a fast food restaurant or a supermarket and rented new movies for a dollar per day? The DVDs are typically housed in a kiosk that's the size of a soda vending machine. The selection is usually limited to a hundred or so titles at most. But imagine walking in and being able to select from a catalog of thousands of films. The kiosk would then burn you a DVD copy to rent or buy. This is the next development that's coming down the pike. It's going to be like having the world's biggest Blockbuster or the entire Netflix catalog at your fingertips. The technology for this advancement has existed for a while, but the major movie studios had concerns about these burned DVDs being pirated. Now that those issues have been addressed, The Wall Street Journal reports that chains like Walgreens hope to get in front of this trend and place DVD-burning kiosks in their stores. Once the initial bugs are worked out, this service is going to be incredibly convenient for consumers.

People generally know that if you shop online marketplaces you run the risk of buying counterfeit goods -- especially if you're shopping for designer clothes. But there's been a lot of counterfeiting going on in the high-end electronics world. Clark believes Amazon is actually damaging its good name with its Amazon Marketplace, which features independent sellers who you must contact directly to resolve any issues. David Colker, a Los Angeles Times staff writer, recently went to the Amazon Marketplace to buy expensive headphones. When he got the goods, they looked like the real thing. The only problem was the terrible sound quality. Colker eventually determined he'd bought a knockoff. So Clark wants to warn his listeners about fakes infiltrating the high-end electronics market. With electronics, the discounts are not so huge that you'd automatically know what you're buying is counterfeit. Clark's advice is to stick to established retailers whether you're buying online or in-person and always pay attention to the return policy. Sam's Club has a policy of unlimited right to return electronics -- there's no time limit or expiration date ever. This latest headphone episode reminds Clark of the time when Tiffany & Co. bought a lot of its goods on eBay to verify if they were real. It turned out that every last item advertised as the genuine thing turned out to be a fake.

If you own a business or manage a company, do you allow your employees the freedom to make you money or do you put them in a straitjacket? One of the biggest straitjackets is working from the office. The Wall Street Journal revealed the results of a study that monitored 10,000 workers. Some of the workers were telecommuters and others were regular office workers. Job satisfaction and loyalty to the employer were higher among those who telecommuted. A lot of employers are still suspicious of letting people work from home. There's the idea that people have to be monitored to be efficient. Human nature dictates that some people will be very motivated workers and others will not be very motivated at all. But you can't create productivity by staring at someone across the office. Clark himself admits that his productivity at the studio drops to almost zero. That's why he does all his show research at home. He's the kind of person who finds the office is a major distraction because he loves to chat with co-workers!

Sometimes people call in to the show and complain about having credit cards with interest rates of 28 or 30 percent. But that pales in comparison to something Clark recently heard about. The Kansas City Star reports that some online lenders make loans in the amount of $500-$2,500 dollars at 650 percent interest! These people are loan sharks and they're spreading like locusts because of the Internet -- even in states that don't permit lending of this type. But these lenders are still making illegal loans across state lines. The people who make these loans are complete and total scum, according to Clark. These lenders say they're taking on big risk by lending to people with bad credit or no credit. They're also arguing in various federal courts that they are not subject to the state laws where they're lending, but rather only in the states where they're set up. That's the same deal with the credit card companies. Many years ago the Supreme Court ruled it is legal for a bank to set up its credit card operation in a state where there are no rules. That's why so many credit cards are based in South Dakota or Delaware. So now these scum Internet lenders are invoking these rights too. Will it fly? This will ultimately be decided as it works its way through higher courts. All you need to know is that when you see an Internet loan offer, you must turn your back on it. Don't take hard times in your life and make them worse.