CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Auto salesman Ryan Thomas is watching the credit crisis hit Main Street America. On Monday, as Congress rejected a bailout plan and stock markets plummeted, Thomas had to turn away a customer with $3,000 in his hand who wanted to buy a new vehicle.

"He wanted to get into a bigger truck for his job, he was a union worker," Thomas said. But the man still owed money on the vehicle he was trading in, so his loan request was denied.

"He didn't have enough money down. He would have needed about $5,500 down and he had $3,000. A year ago that was a piece of cake," Thomas said.

The customer left without his American-made vehicle, Thomas lost another sale -- and somewhere an autoworker made one less truck, a tiny ripple in the growing U.S. financial crisis.

As Wall Street collapses and politicians in Washington struggle to agree on a rescue package, credit markets across America are grinding to a halt, leaving many business owners and would-be borrowers alike without money to get by.

Anger and blame are everywhere. While outraged voters besieged members of Congress with calls and e-mails demanding lawmakers reject a White House plan to bail out a sinking Wall Street, some experts believe the resulting stock crash and credit panic may spur a new rescue campaign.

The House of Representatives voted the plan down on Monday, but top lawmakers said they hoped a revised bailout bill could clear in the near future.

"Some of the folks in Congress ... will start to hear it from the other side now," said Al Kugel, chief investment strategist at Atlantic Trust in Chicago.

Without a new plan, Kugel worries the credit shortage will get worse: "It will be like a boa constrictor has got the economy and just keeps squeezing."

Dallas-area roofing contractor Bill Good has already felt the squeeze. Before times were tough, his bank offered him a $100,000 credit line that he didn't need. Now, with high oil prices doubling the cost of roofing material, he's strapped.

"Now I can't access this kind of money to facilitate my cash flow. The lines of credit ... have dried up," said Good.

Kansas City cabinet maker Anthony Gallo is in a similar bind. Eighteen months ago Gallo had no debt. Now he's being forced to borrow just to make payroll -- just as his chief lender has cut his credit line from $400,000 to $175,000.

"My line of credit has been cut to nothing," said Gallo. "We're all hurting... and wondering what is going to happen."

Main Street America angry over credit crisis | Reuters

Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to get over their damn selves and do what's best for the country.

This is very real.
It's not just a thing where "I lost money in the stock market" type of thing. If it were, I would be less interested in a legislative response.

In the 20's when virtually every little family with a paycheck invested in stock of some kind, the numbers on the big board ment a lot more to the average American. Today there have been many people who already knew there was a "crises" long before it was felt on Wallstreet. We have lived on credit so long, people are going to find it hard to do without it. But if we don't start saving even if this crunch blows over, we are just fooling ourselves.
How in the heck can anyone reason away frivolous spending? At the gas pump, or online or at the Walmart? But they continue to do that. "I just had to have that DVD, CD, birthday gift for so-and-so". I still hear it all the time and I can't believe these folks are in the same demension I'm in.
I need: shelter, food, heat. I want many things. But I'll just have to wait till I have the money in hand. I know that's a new concept for Americans today, but-oh well.

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I did not win the Powerball again!


"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
--Jonathan Swift

I use very little credit..in fact,the only credit I use is for my mortgage. I pay cash for almost everything I buy. Sometimes the clerk seems startled,this was true when I handed him $2,800 in cash for a new garden tractor..

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"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"-FDR

http://jeffersonblog.history.org/doe...ecision-making

Yes, but you're thinking in terms of retail credit. The problem here is that the credit that is drying up is the credit given to businesses. If there is no credit, there is no expansion. Let's say my company buys supplies from Office Depot. Are we gonna be going in there and paying cash? Obviously there is a monthly bill that needs to be paid, but the services are provided up front. Office Depot will need lines of credit to be operational while its creditors cancel their bills. Abuse of credit is a huge problem, but credit is necessary for expansion. To say let's just get rid of credit and work with cash only would mean no one would ever own a house again. I'd like to see you come up with 150k for a home, . That real estate agent would be quite shocked, .

I would never pay 150 thousand for a home. But monetary worth like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I was thinking more along the lines of how people are going to react to a cash crunch not being able to buy those extras. But I get what you are saying about business. That's going to hurt. But unfortunately the average person is so PO'd at the government they don't care.

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I did not win the Powerball again!


"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
--Jonathan Swift

Some guy trying to buy a new vehicle he couldn't afford is all I see here, not a 'credit crunch'. Credit is not some God given Right, after all.

There is all kinds of cash out there whipsawing the stock market up and down, a 500+ jump is a lot of cash pumped in. People really need to get used to the idea that it soaks up a huge amount of money out of the economy when $40K houses eat up $500K in funds that can be spent elsewhere, especially when you sell it to some idiot making $40K and can't even make the payments; you can't have it both ways, no matter what the swindlers tell you. Then there is that almost $1 trillion in consumer debt. You can't drive down wages for over 30 years, and ship jobs overseas while at the same time importing 100 million immigrants and some 20 to 30 million illegal immigrants to further drive down wages, and then expect to have any kind of domestic consumer economy. it just can't happen, period.

Let me ask you something, cause you just jiggled something loose in my brain about this.
What is the person making 40 to 50 K a year to do? If they don't own a home and want to buy one, I mean. Some kids are lucky to make 30 (and by kids I mean late 20 to early thirty year olds). Some older people don't ever make that much money. In fact many don't. We can't all be doctors and lawyers or even MBA's. Some have to build the roads and work in the schools and be clerks. With the mortgages set at 150 to 200 for a decent home, the rent also is not cheap. So how in the heck is a person making that supposed to get by?
The reason I ask is I've been thinking about this for some time. The county I live in and the one across the river in Oregon, has some pretty low wages. I've seen places like this all over the country while traveling with my trucker hubby. Regular people just can't afford to buy a house. Not all people, but enough that it makes me stop and think. Now if young people don't have anything invested, that they are proud to work for and that shows they are winning the game to provide for their families, it's no wonder so many are on dope and the rest act like they just don't give a darn!
I'll tell you another thing. Socialism in a few more years will look real good to those youngsters.

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I did not win the Powerball again!


"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
--Jonathan Swift

That's all I saw, too...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

1. You don't have enough information to make a fair assessment. The information you need isn't going to be published in a newspaper article.

2. This man could very well 'afford' the truck, but cannot acquire one now due to the limits on lending caused by the failures of the credit industry.

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they flee the East and West coasts in droves, and move to more affordable parts of the country.

Most don't; they just eventually go bankrupt. I read somewhere the average age of defaulters is around 35 or so. Many also move into houses after Grandma dies, or find one of the many 'rent to own' deals you see in older neighborhoods, or buy trailers, whatever. I also see stats about some 20% of young children being taken care of by grandparents, probably because being on Social Security gives them a stable income and usually they've paid their houses off, two things a lot of people don't have and haven't had for a long time. Others just have well off parents and relatives they can get help from.

For low income black and hispanic males, the 'welfare system' in place for them is county jails, prison, shelters, and gangs. Illegal immigration, and a lot of legal immigration as well, pretty much destroyed a lot of minority businesses and contractors. Democrats really hate it when this latter is pointed out, since it was their cognitive dissonance of aiding labor racketeering under the rubrick of 'fighting racism' that has been Reason #1 that minority citizens have been shut out form the traditional ways blue collar workers rise to the lower rungs of the middle class and send their children on to college or set them up in businesses of their own. But, it's 'all raycist N stuff' to oppose illegal immigration and labor racketeering ... Democrats and the Chamber Of Commerce have always been on the same page when it comes to labor racketeering.

Socialism is certainly working well for the corporations and middle class; they get bailed out regularly; it's the people who really need the help that never get it. They don't tend to vote.