A high credit score doesn't mean you don't need a loan. I know some really poor people with an 800 score.

Thank goodness we don't need a new car.

At least, not yet.

So, what say you about tomorrow?

Upsy, daisy, or down-U-go?

I said this in the 1970s and still think it pretty much every day.

THE STOCK MARKET IS A CRAPSHOOT!

However, I am really enjoying following Dr. Krugman's blog.

Peace, love and happiness,

Ellen Kimball in Orego

Oh, by the way, we own a 1997 Mercury Sable (paid off) and a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse (paid off).

The Lincoln Mercury dealership went out of business last month. They had built one of the most beautiful buildings with a large customer service area and Internet access. We had our 90,000 mile service there this summer.

I think the Ford dealership will take care of our used Mercury, and the Mitsu people are still solvent.

Elvis you're back in form.

Cerberus squeezing GM to lower GM's value to force Stockholm syndrome?

CR, reminds me of another old saying: "A banker will lend you an umbrella on a sunny day and ask for it back when it starts to rain."

I have a work colleague whose husband works as a salesman at a suffering Chevrolet dealership in northern Virginia. Recently, her husband was told to stay at the managers desk while the managers huddled in a back room for a meeting.

When they emerged, they told the salesmen that GMAC will only give loans to people with 700+ credit scores.

Her husband is convinced that virtually all sales will dry up now that GMAC did this, because virtually everyone who walked into the dealership with less than a 700 FICO score got a GMAC loan. Almost everyone with a 700+ score would get a loan from another source because they could get a better rate elsewhere, and these people were probably less than 20% of all buyers at the dealership. And lately, the dealership was hardly selling any cars anyway.

The REPO business is great. There has been a lag owing to a longer 'grace' period that finance companies are allowing.

It will pick up quite nicely in the coming months.

They will want the vehicles back quickly. You can trash a truck quicker than a house.

Man, the Big Three can't catch a break, not that I feel too sorry for them. I would imagine the typical GM buyer is a worse credit risk than the typical Toyota buyer, for instance.

Is there any trend going in their favor? Oh yes, they can more easily lobby congress and the admin than the non-domestics...

Hopefully, Cerebus is a dead three headed dog, with a gunshot in each head. After what they did to the original Albertson's grocery store, with Larry Johnston (from GE) in charge who got his golden parachute with Cerebus helping him all the way.

They could use a guillotine, which may be making a comeback.

CR, Justin,

Re: This remains me of the old saying

Needs work, get with it and no more vodka!

yogi writes:
Never misunderestimate the dumbass stoner. For every W. there is a big Lebowski.

Dude, if you're a stoner and you know you're a dumbass, isn't that, like, something different?

I'll kill this one too:

threadkiller.

cracker writes:
if everything is a guaranteed.
if everyone has all the money.
if everyone made all the right moves.
if, but only if, and or...

boolean logic, algorythms of levered moneys, fiat, social order and standing are fixed?

working as a function of fear of the unknown?

Do for oneself for the good of others? getting to the end of oneself.

Not Socialism,not fascism, not communism, certainly not capitaltism, then what is it.....

fear it, it's a hard road.

whats the fucking -ism?

yet to be decided.
cracker | 10.14.08 - 11:28 pm

Limit losses....thats the bottom.

Elvis: The only thing that offends me here is the anti-Erin bigotry.

PeakVT writes:
Is there a more cowardly bunch of herd animals than bankers?

The Democratic Party?

The friends are starting to fear for their security, so I'm thinking that sacrificing a three-headed dog that literally guards Hades wouldn't be a bad PR event.

Their friends don't appear to fearful to me. PR? If they got sacrified who covers GMAC paper?

fears runnin it....

greed is concept on vacation.

I want to ask a question about the Chinese situation discussed two threads down. The general consensus seems to be that if China stops exporting flat screens to the US, they run a serious risk of social unrest.

So why can't the Chinese government buy up all the flat screens and then bury them in a cave? It would be inflationary, sure, but keep buying trash paper from the US is also inflationary. If they have to trade flat screens for trash paper, they might as well cut out the middleman (US), no?

social unrest in china is good for America...

fears runnin it......run with fear.

why cant China sink a ship and blame....ohh lets say,

the Icelandic Navy.

Comrade Misean is having a burrito and a Dr. Pepper. He'll be back.

Planned obsolescence has come full circle. No cash dividend, but the stoners are fine. I rode in a 1990 Toyota with 118k miles this weekend.
Original clutch, engine, radiator...

Kudlow says 1/3 of homes are owned free and clear.

Q: Who are these buyers and where do they live?

A: Over 55 folks living in rural areas.

GMAC say 58% of consumers are FICO 700+.

Connection?

Demographics are wonderful. Until they aren't.

"Maybe it's time to see if I can get a deal on a Corvette."

I once started to play around absentmindedly with the flange on the roof of a Corvette, and it started to come off the car. It made me feel like King Kong.

The Pearlstein piece is nasty and great.

If the US is going to go down the crapper, which it is, we need to revise our marketing. And one thing we definitely need is a new national anthem.

Some might go emotional, very much like Pavlov's dogs, when they hear the Star Spangled Banner, but let's face it...it needs to go.

It sucks as a song, nobody can really sing it, and Joe Sixpack has never seen rockets, isn't very free, and sure-as-shit aint brave.

I propose this tune as our new anthem. It fits America better today and we could all sing parts at baseball games without sounding like a bunch of raped alley cats.

YouTube -

In honor of poster Elvis, for America.

Actually, I didn't know there was an Icelandic Navy. I thought it was a sort of coast guard, mostly unarmed.

Every single time I hear the National Anthem Jimi's Woodsteck version goes off in my head. I can't stop it, and I don't want to.

Nothing would be more unifying than 80,000 people with their hats over their hearts repeating, "In the ghetto......" and then getting back to their circus. We need a new air of honesty in America.

This is where we start.

"Things changed for Otis Blackwell on Christmas Eve, 1955. That night he sold six songs that he had written for a total of $150. One of the demos included in these six had been recorded with Otis playing piano and the drummer using a cardboard box. It was picked up by Elvis Presley, who did not write his own songs and whose style at the time was to pick songs that he liked from demos that he heard and then use the same arrangement that he had heard on the demo. The song was Don't Be Cruel, which went to number one in 1956, as did another Presley song the following year that had been written by Otis, All Shook Up. It had been inspired a shaken bottle of Pepsi Cola.

The success of Don't Be Cruel gave a jolt to the songwriting career of the talented Otis Blackwell. He wrote more songs for Presley, among them One Broken Heart For Sale and Return To Sender."

In the new air of honesty, credit is given where credit is due.

People are sheep. Once the prevailing social trend turns towards frugality they will be clustered around the water cooler going baa baa about their 10 year old car and how they are saving money by eating pasta and hamburger at home.

What was recently sneered at will now be applauded. Frugality, of course, is actually good for the country in the long run but it plays holy hell with our current debt driven consumption focused society in the short run.

Meraxos predicts a prolonged bitter recession followed by a period of intense class warfare when the rich and powerful try to tell the young "no good jobs for you" and tell the old "no good retirement for you".

Interesting comments about Cerberus. Would you invest in their batting lineup? John Snow - what did he ever accomplish at CSX and Treasury?; Rumsfeld & Quayle - couldn't they get David Stockman or Mark Foley too?; a bunch of over-hyped GE guys - the bloom is way off the Jack Welch rose. If Nardelli got $360 million to screw up Home Depot, how much does he get for Chrysler? Will they still have friends in the next administration?

That is my idea for the US gov't buying up the foreclosed homes (at foreclosed market rates) and bulldozing them.
Elvis | 10.14.08 - 11:46 pm | #

Why not just give them to the homeless veterens? Having people who risked their lives for this country living under bridges is a national disgrace. Would seem to solve 2 problems. Its not like most of these guys are in the market for houses as it is.

CR-
Might be better said as:

Bankers SHOULD only lend to those who CAN PAY IT BACK.