Hello, Wine Embers. My name is Jesse. Meekam with another episode of the Wine Em Podcast,

where we teach you four rules to help you stop it in paycheck to paycheck, get out of debt,

and save more money. I'm going to run through some more questions of Ask Jesse, and I'm going to

start with an article. Peter sent me this on-slashdod, and it's linking to a piece in the Atlantic,

basically talking about how airlines are just banks now. And Peter, who sent this to me,

guessed correctly, that I would find that interesting, because as I've said, many times on this

podcast, successful companies eventually just become financing companies. They just become banks.

They just become part of the financial system to really, really, really make the money.

And a couple really good quotes here. They talk about how airlines essentially

open up these points systems way back in the day to be more competitive after the deregulation

in 1978. And they have become banks. Airlines create points out of nothing and sell them

for real money to banks. I'm reading this now with co-branded credit cards. The banks award

points to cardholders for spending in both the banks and credit card companies make money off

the swipe fees from the use of the card. End quote. Y'all, that's what we've been talking about

for a while here. And I'm reading again, cardholders can redeem points for flights. Okay, we already

know all this. For the airlines, this is a great deal. They incur no cost from points until they

are redeemed or ever if the points are forgotten. This setup has made loyalty programs highly

lucrative. Consumers, this is a crazy stat. Now charge nearly 1% of US GDP to Delta's American express

credit cards alone. That is insane. A 2020 analysis by the financial times that Wall Street found

that Wall Street lenders valued the major airlines mileage programs more highly than the airlines

themselves. United's mileage plus program, for example, was valued at $22 billion. While the

company's market cap at the time was only 10.6 billion. Is this a good deal for the American

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