Clue #1: there was more credit creation and lending going on in the last eight years than practically cumulatively in America’s history, with inflation anywhere from an “official” 4% to a more realistic 10%-12% per year. Gee, I wonder why all these professional bankers and investment brokers lacked your “common sense” and made these loans in an inflationary environment — what suckers!!! Gee, I wonder why it’s virtually impossible to get credit since the bubbles burst?

Your post, utterly lacking in substantiation, is one of the most inane I’ve read in a long time. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself before you challenge John H’s record -550 karma score:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Then get back to me.

On a side note, the current economic environment is not in the least deflationary.

Yeah, good luck on that! I’ve got a great score and an excellent history, but Wachovia doesn’t think I’m worthy of an 11k car loan.

Wachovia can suck it.

Although I say that, and I’m the one driving my dad’s car to work. So I guess I’m sucking it.

This sucks.

Here we are, hyper-responsible, doing everything and anything short of prostituting ourselves (mainly because we don’t have the time) to avoid defaulting on anything, to avoid laying people off, and we *still* get treated like dirt.

Yet another candidate for a clue-by-four bitchslap.

“Fair” does not apply here. They’re a business, they have every right to stop lending money to anyone they wish to stop lending money to, for whatever reason they choose, no matter how stupid their decision might be.

I have no doubt they’ve got their share of lousy customer service people and, occasionally, policies. But I don’t think the current wave of credit calls is something they really would do if they could help it.

That isn’t to agree to disagree with the bailout, but rather, to correct the misunderstanding of the story itself.

I fully expect to get this call, or something like it, too (e.g., I need to replace a car whose lease expires in January; I seriously doubt there will be any lease financing available, and I may have a hard time just finding conventional financing, too).

Two points on Cheney’s crazy war powers theory: First, you would think that an avowed originalist would at least feel the need to explain how his theory of monarchical executive power in wartime squares with Article I, Section 8′s rather explicit delegation to Congress of the power to “make Rules for the government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”

Second, his claim in the Fox News interview, that the President’s ability to summon Armeggedon at any time by calling for the nuclear “football” kept near him is an insubstantial constitutional argument against Congress’s role in war powers. Just because the President could unleash nuclear war doesn’t make doing so in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war constitutional.

As if Cheney and Bush ever really cared about the Constitution, anyway.