Maria Aspan reports for the American Banker in Monday's edition that "U.S. Bancorp and American Express Co. are squaring off for a marketing battle that will be waged with reward programs but could be won on reputation." At stake are the cardholders of the Northwest WorldPerks Visa card (issued by US Bank) - with US Bank also competing for those cardholders with a new FlexPerks Visa card! See the next story for late news tonight about litigation brought by Northwest against US Bank.

Suzanne Ziegler reports for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune about a lawsuit filed today by Northwest Airlines (now merged into Delta) against US Bank trying to stop the bank's efforts to migrate cardholders from the soon to be defunct Northwest Worldperks Visa card (issued by US Bank) to U.S. Bank's new FlexPerks Visa card. Delta is, of course, planning to move those cardholders to its American Express SkyMiles card.

Former Secretary of Labor and currently a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Reich blogs about the current credit card situation in the US. "For years, banks used every gimmick possible to get the public to use their cards -- regardless of the credit worthiness of the customer."

In an article titled "Credit-Card Shocks Anger More Borrowers", Jennifer Waters reports for the Wall St. Journal on why many recent actions taken by credit card issuers have been so frustrating to many consumers:

"Welcome to today's credit-card world, where interest rates and fees can go up, and credit limits and rewards benefits can go down, seemingly at the drop of a hat and with little notice to borrowers - a situation that has consumers fuming and politicians taking notice."

Saul Hansell of the New York Times has a post on the BITS blog titled "Undoing Meg Whitman’s eBay" in which he looks at the recent actions by eBay CEO John Donahue undoing several of the acquisitions done by former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Hansell writes that Donahue is, however, excited about PayPal - but asks what PayPal is trying to be - and questions whether it adds value.

In an article titled "Edgy Banks Start to Get Word Today on Stress Tests", Eric Dash reports for the New York Times that the "Federal Reserve intends to disclose, in general terms, how it conducted the stress tests on Friday afternoon, but the government will not publicly reveal the results until May 4."

• Floyd Norris Blog - NYTimes.com: Congress’s Gifts Can Be Poison
• NYTimes.com: Two Legislative Approaches to Reining in Credit Card Companies - List