U.S. Theatre of the Absurd

[gerisullivan]

As if there weren't enough problems with the proposed bailout, there's this little gem that cakmpls quoted this morning. As reported by Forbes.com:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

My head would go all 'splody if I didn't have Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert over at Comedy Central to turn to. Humor truly is the best medicine.

Banks aren't lending money to other banks, yet since this whole financial thing blew up a couple of weeks ago, I've personally received more and better offers for loans than I've received in months. And it's not just an anomaly of the mail cycle -- one of the offers turned up in a phone call. It was totally unexpected. I wasn't even thinking about the possibility of a lower rate on the transaction I was calling about; I only wanted to check on the mechanics of it to make sure it went through smoothly.

Yes, I know the experience of the one does not translate to the experience of the many. And getting 1.99% interest from me is better than they can get from banks that are refusing to move money at all this week. I'll gladly take the added savings in my interest costs, especially since there were no transaction fees and the rate it goes to at the end of the promotional period is the rate I expected to be paying from the get-go.

But it's unsettling when financial institutions rate me a better credit risk than their fellow financial institutions. Truly unsettling.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

My own finances have been through a roller coaster. As you know, I've been through a home foreclosure. Things are rather better now, and my credit is fine. But I couldn't guarantee a car loan for one of my kids at anything like an interest rate I was willing to consider. Even at the bank we both use, and even with rather more cash in that bank than we asked to borrow.

We couldn't even find an acceptable deal with both B and I co-signing the loan. That was last winter, and my first sign of the credit crunch.

K.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

And that's another "head go 'splody" moment. They'll keep loaning me money at single-digit rates, but won't loan money at decent rates to people in far, far better financial circumstances. WTF is that all about? It continues to make no sense.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, one piece of it is that "they" may be completely unrelated companies in the two instances you site as conflicting.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Or different divisions of the same company, if by chance one of the many creditors I'm referring to happens to be the bank K. and family use.

[kaffy_r]

I've noticed that between 2004 and 2007 (first half), more than half our daily mail consisted of "you are pre-approved" letters, and we consistently got calls from places like Wells-Fargo offering quickie loans. That's when we were in foreclosure. This year, now that we are no longer in foreclosure, those no longer appear.

(And speaking of foreclosure, let me now praise National City, which worked with us intensely to avoid foreclosure, voluntarily strung out foreclosure as long as possible, then gladly tore up the papers once BB got SSI. We asked them why. Their answer? "We'd rather have you pay some mortgage, including taxes, than take your home from you and be stuck with a property we can't re-sell, but must pay taxes on." Genius. If more banks had taken that attitude....)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a fine outcome. I couldn't negotiate with them at all when I lost my house. I did manage to hang on a surprisingly long time, because the S&Ls that kept selling my mortgage to each other kept failing, and my paperwork kept getting lost. I was able to save quite a lot during the time it took to actually have my house sold at sheriff's auction.

K.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

It's gotten moreso.  Many of these mortgages have been sliced and diced and passed around and recombined so many times that the original paperwork is lost.
One of the current stalls to hold off eviction is to say in court, "Yes, I'm x months behind on payments, but prove that you are the specific party entitled to receive those payments!" and it sometimes makes the legal proceeding go away.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I keep getting the preapproved offers for business loans or cards. I don't have a business. I've called the opt-out number for preapproved offers twice now and the damn things keep coming.

One of the weird things is that I have a really great credit score, but I have no extra money. So I keep getting offers that I couldn't possibly consider.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm still pondering the implications of "We just wanted to choose a really large number", and rather expect it to cause me to have a nightmare tonight.

But then, I suspect that the actual factor involved (Republican Administration Officials tend to lie a lot) was that this was the largest amount they thought they could extract from the Treasury to give away to their friends & past & future business associates.