Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or work loads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. Peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client-server model in which the consumption and supply of resources is divided. Emerging collaborative P2P systems are going beyond the era of peers doing similar things while sharing resources, and are looking for diverse peers that can bring in unique resources and capabilities to a virtual community thereby empowering it to engage in greater tasks beyond those that can be accomplished by individual peers, yet that are beneficial to all the peers.

Credit card

A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) as a method of payment. It allows the cardholder to pay for goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for them. The issuer of the card (usually a bank) creates a revolving account and grants a line of credit to the cardholder, from which the cardholder can borrow money for payment to a merchant or as a cash advance.

A credit card is different from a charge card, where it requires the balance to be repaid in full each month. In contrast, credit cards allow the consumers a continuing balance of debt, subject to interest being charged. A credit card also differs from a cash card, which can be used like currency by the owner of the card. A credit card differs from a charge card also in that a credit card typically involves a third-party entity that pays the seller and is reimbursed by the buyer, whereas a charge card simply defers payment by the buyer until a later date.

Credit score

A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of the person. A credit score is primarily based on a credit report information typically sourced from credit bureaus.

Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers and to mitigate losses due to bad debt. Lenders use credit scores to determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and what credit limits. Lenders also use credit scores to determine which customers are likely to bring in the most revenue. The use of credit or identity scoring prior to authorizing access or granting credit is an implementation of a trusted system.

Credit scoring is not limited to banks. Other organizations, such as mobile phone companies, insurance companies, landlords, and government departments employ the same techniques. Credit scoring also has much overlap with data mining, which uses many similar techniques. These techniques combine thousands of factors but are similar or identical.

Peer-to-peer lending

Peer-to-peer lending, sometimes abbreviated P2P lending, is the practice of lending money to individuals or businesses through online services that match lenders directly with borrowers. Since the peer-to-peer lending companies offering these services operate entirely online, they can run with lower overhead and provide the service more cheaply than traditional financial institutions. As a result, lenders often earn higher returns compared to savings and investment products offered by banks, while borrowers can borrow money at lower interest rates, even after the P2P lending company has taken a fee for providing the match-making platform and credit checking the borrower.

Also known as crowdlending, many peer-to-peer loans are unsecured personal loans, though some of the largest amounts are lent to businesses. Secured loans are sometimes offered by using luxury assets such as jewelry, watches, vintage cars, fine art, buildings, aircraft and other business assets as collateral. They are made to an individual, company or charity. Other forms of peer-to-peer lending include student loans, commercial and real estate loans, payday loans, as well as secured business loans, leasing and factoring.

Mad Money

Mad Money is an American finance television program hosted by Jim Cramer that began airing on CNBC on March 14, 2005. Its main focus is investment and speculation, particularly in publicly traded stocks. In a notable departure from the CNBC programming style prior to its arrival, Mad Money presents itself in an entertainment-style format rather than a news broadcasting one.

Cramer defines "mad money" as the money one "can use to invest in stocks ... not retirement money, which you want in 401K or an IRA, a savings account, bonds, or the most conservative of dividend-paying stocks."

Mad Money replaced Dylan Ratigan's Bullseye for the 6 p.m. Eastern Time slot. On January 8, 2007, CNBC began airing reruns of the show at 11 p.m. Eastern Time, on Monday through Friday, and at 4 a.m. Eastern Time, on Saturdays.

In March 2012, the program became a part of what was formerly branded as NBC All Night in the nominal 3:07 a.m. ET/2:07 a.m. timeslot on weeknights, replacing week-delayed repeats of NBC's late night talk shows. In that form, only the video for the program was presented on a 16:9 screen with gray branded windowboxing and pillarboxing, with all enhanced business information, including the CNBC Ticker, removed. Because of the scheduling of local station's 4 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. newscasts to air Early Today depending on how a station schedules its overnight programming (even if it airs at the regular time in the Eastern and Pacific time zones for instance, seven minutes would have to be cut-off to fit in Early Today and a local newscast starting at 4:30 a.m.), it is subject to local pre-emption, including by NBC O&O's.