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Thank you.

But I really wish I was wrong. I wish things were different but they aren't. I have friends who lost their jobs after working 15 - 25 years for a big electronic retailer, who may never recover. These aren't bad people but they aren't you and I, they want to work for someone, not be their own boss. The reality is that they are too old and too expensive for corporate America. That's no one's fault. It wasn't a plot, times changed more rapidly than people could adapt.

Try being unemployed for three years and tell me what your credit is going to look like? I did it. There were days when the best I could do was feed my family. My savings and investments carried me through for almost a year, freelance kept food on the table and the lights on but not much more. I worked any and all the jobs I could get but we were so far behind that it didn't make sense. Here it is 4 years later and I'm still trying to recover - savings gone, house gone, bank accounts gone. And I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Others lost more, so much more.

My bank, the one I have been a loyal customer with for over 20 years wouldn't touch me. All the money they made off of me, and when I needed a small loan (less than $10,000) to float my family through it was "no" - it's just business. I had to go to the payday lenders. I hated doing it but we had to live. I paid them back before the interest kicked in. I see how bad they are but at least they were there. Where was my bank?

I am sorry if this turned into my soapbox, but if you haven't lived it don't dare try to tell someone that they need to get it together.

That's just wrong, morally wrong.

I would not have wished this on my worse enemy.

Subprime was not wrong. Variable rates were wrong. The problem was that people who were making their payments saw their payments balloon to a rate that was predatory. No one has claimed that fixed subprime loans were the problem, this is a "variable" problem. And there were fixed subprime loans.

Contradicted? How so? I said and am saying that lending decisions are based on more than credit scores, and it has been documented. I called banks wrong for not applying the rules the same for everyone. I stand by that. I think subprime has its place, it works in the automobile lending industry because the rates are NOT variable.

Now, ask me what I think about credit one day and we will really have things going. I think credit is the best marketed product on the planet. People have become convinced we cannot live without it, and this has happened in less than 120 years.