Twenty year-old Jennifer Mercado was a juror on a credit card thief's case. So she stole a fellow juror's credit card. And used it on her lunch hour. And came back to court with the stuff she bought. Winner. [NYDN]

Who knew Diners Club still existed? It turns out it does and today Citigroup announced that it's selling off the near-dead credit card franchise to a Canadian bank for "an undisclosed sum" (read: not much) as it looks to shed "noncore assets and streamline operations." A look back at the glory days of America's first credit card below.

Why doesn't NYC's Commerce restaurant allow you to pay for its American food with "Asian, French and Italian accents" in cash? Because this way, the poors don't sneak in.

Big banks have lost hundreds of billions of dollars as the economic downturn has left millions of Americans unable to pay their credit card bills. So that would make this the perfect time to introduce a new card with no spending limits, right? No? Oh, well. It seems Chase is now planning to give American Express a run for its money with its new, "limitless" "Sapphire" card. The good news, clearly: Jamie Dimon's debt-collecting good squad should have no problem keeping busy for the foreseeable future. [NYP, Bloomberg]

The Way We Live Now: Moaning, creatively. Artists are poor. More so! But credit cards are now a responsible financial option. I think we've solved all of our problems!

Two years ago it was probably really sweet to have Bernie Madoff give you a corporate credit card you could use to waste tons of money. Today, you'd wish you hadn't bought all that crap:

How did all those shady mortgage companies get America's finances all fucked up in the first place? By using the freakish amount of publicly available data about all of our lives to target those people who were the most needy, vulnerable, and ignorant, and reel them into unsustainable debt. Now that everything is screwed up, how are financial companies going to pull us out of this mess? The exact same way! Data mining is going just as strong as ever, and all these credit card and loan companies are really trying to bring in new customers now that their last round of customers have all gone bankrupt. Even the big credit rating firms like Equifax and Experian make huge money slicing up all of the information they have on everyone, classifying us into little demographic groups, and selling it to third parties who can then send disturbingly well-targeted (or just disturbing, period) pitches. One woman got dozens of credit card offers congratulating her on recently emerging from bankruptcy. Other people get letters from random companies that show how much the balance is left on their own home mortgage. Someone should be punched for this. Possibly these people:

MasterCard has just released a new credit card for the good people of Dubai—the good, rich, rich, rich people. The Dubai First Royale MasterCard is invitation-only, offered to a "select" group of elites who "must possess the right criteria in terms of social standing and profile." And are very rich. The card itself is diamond-studded—practical and functional. It offers benefits like a huge credit line and a personal concierge. Neither you nor we shall ever have one of these. Sob. Below, a guide to other deluxe credit cards neither of us will ever be invited to own; press your nose to the glass and salivate at the pretty, pretty plastic.