Many student-loan companies are in the process of assessing the industry rescue plan outlined on Wednesday by Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education. Several that had initially left the federal loan program, have already come back.

The Bush administration’s plan will offer loan companies two things - low-interest lines of credit and the ability to sell their loans to the government at a rate exceeding their face value. The administration and congress came up with the plan to head off the possibility that a combination of federal subsidy reductions and economic troubles might leave some students unable to find willing lenders.

Before this announcement, nearly 90 student-loan lenders had announced their withdrawal, either in part or in full, from the federal program. Even before the day was over, nonprofit lender NorthStar Education Finance had announced that it would be returning to the program.

In addition to Northstar, both Brazos Group and Graduate Leverage have come back on-line as well. “We’ve definitely changed our mind,” Daniel Thibeault, president of Graduate Leverage told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “In my mind, 90 percent of the lending community couldn’t lend two weeks ago. Now, I don’t see how a significant player could say, ‘I don’t want to lend.’ It’s going to be exciting.”

The Federal Reserve has now joined other U.S. banking regulators in supporting new limits on nefarious billing practices by credit card companies.

The Fed has approved a proposal that would generally prohibit credit card issuers from increasing the annual percentage rate (APR) on a card holder’s outstanding balance. It would also prevent companies from going back to prior billing cycles when calculating the amount of interest charges on the current cycle, a practice known in the industry as double-cycle billing.

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision along with the National Credit Union Administration have already approved the proposal. All three regulators said that they hope to put the finishing touches on the rule by the end of this year.

In the U.S., the biggest issuers of Visa and MasterCard credit cards are Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One, and Discover Financial Services.

“The proposed rules are intended to establish a new baseline for fairness in how credit card plans operate,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a meeting to approve the proposal. “Consumers relying on credit cards should be better able to predict how their decisions and actions will affect their costs.”

The banking industry has fought bills before, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives that aim to limit similar practices.

The new plan would also prohibit banks, and credit unions from charging a fee for paying an overdraft on a checking account, debit card purchase or ATM withdrawal unless they give consumers the ability to opt out of overdraft payments.

The proposal will also take steps to stop the practice of raising interest rates on a balance when a cardholder fails to make payments on a totally unrelated bill. Democrats in Congress have said the proposals appear to tackle some practices, but more can be done but they are still an improvement from the current practices.

In recent months, a number of U.S. politicians have criticized credit card billing and marketing policies that they say surprise unsuspecting cardholders who then become trapped in a cycle of exorbitant fees.

Just because it’s a bad time to be a homeowner doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good time to rent an apartment.

While homeowners are dealing with the plummeting value of their houses, renters throughout the western part of the United States are writing larger checks to pay for their leases, according to a report released today by the research firm RealFacts.

The average apartment rent rose in March from the previous year in all 19 major Western markets surveyed. Meanwhile, home prices have plunged 10 percent to 30 percent, depending on the particular market.

Analysts have a theory that landlords have been able to raise rents as more people lose their homes to foreclosures and must find somewhere else to live in a hurry.

According to the survey, San Jose is now the most expensive rental market in the West, with the average apartment renting for $1,660 per month, up 9.1% from the same time last year.

However, the cost of renting a Silicon Valley apartment is still well below the peak of $1,959 per month reached in early 2001 at the tail end of the dot-com boom.

California apartment rent averages are also above $1,500 per month in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Ventura County and San Francisco/Oakland.

Outside of California, the West’s most expensive rental market is in Seattle, where the average apartment lease climbed 8.5% to $1,090 per month.

Where are the least expensive apartments in the west? Tucson, Arizona, with rents creeping up only 2% to $668 per month.