Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

Advertising broke today for American Express and The Moinian Group in New York announcing a plan that will allow you to use your AmEx card for the down payment if you’d like to purchase one of the condos in Moinian’s Atelier development in Manhattan. It’s OK if your bank account is running on empty, just charge that 20% deposit (probably a couple of hundred thousand big ones) on the old plastic. Hmmm… I’m thinking here, if that’s on the extended payment plan of either AmEx’s Optima or Business Blue cards, and if it counts as a cash advance, rather than a purchase, then your annual interest rates could be as much as 33%. Which means if you didn’t have enough to put down in the first place. How the heck are you going to make the monthly payments on the mortgage, plus the payments with interest on the money you charged the down payment on? Plus… Oh forget it. Oh, but as AmEx points out, you could earn a heck of a lot frequent flyer miles doing this. Problem is, you probably wouldn’t have a home to come back too!

Can I charge that on my American Express?