I doubt this. There have been threads about getting miles for bonds for well over a year on FT. It's well established that WSJ reporters canvas FT for story ideas, so why would there be an article about this NOW all of a sudden?

One of the longest, but not the earliest, threads on this topic is at

http://www.flyertalk.com/pasttalk/ft...ML/005395.html

In fact it seems to be the other way around: FTers started hardcore bond-buying as a result of an earlier WSJ article!

I bellieve today's article mentioned that some $560 million of bonds were bought via credit cards in 2001. Assuming a 2% merchant fee, that would mean the Feds are eating about $11 million a year (slightly higher for 2002, undoubtedly). Not that the federal government does too many things for free to help you, but how big a deal is $11 million, really?