Bailout? More like failout.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/11/auto.bailout/index.html

I don’t have a lot of time to dissect this, what with my torts final coming up and all, but I actually laughed aloud when I read about it.

Did anyone else catch the irony of the United Auto Workers’ refusal to drop domestic guaranteed pay rates to parity with the rest of the industry? That was, in large part, the cause of the bailout’s failure in the Senate. I’m so glad to hear that all of those union auto workers won’t be losing their salary level. You know, because they’ll still have jobs at which to make that salary. I’m sure GM, Ford, and Chrysler will still be in perfectly healthy financial shape without that $11B. Right? Those union guys are GENIUSES!

And on the political side, there’s yet more irony. The Republicans were bitching that the bailout proposal didn’t come with enough strings attached, and said bitching sealed the deal (or lack thereof). They seemed to ignore the White House’s warning that without the bailout, they’d likely divert TARP funds to the automakers. Those funds are likely to come without any strings attached whatsoever.

Basically, we’re looking at a clusterfuck of gargantuan proportions. The unions have, by attempting to protect their workers in the least sensible way possible, doomed thousands of them to having no job whatsoever. The government is probably going to step in and barely save the Big Three at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, not really force them to change the core of the idiotic policies that led to their near demise, and set them up for failure again in 10 or 20 or how ever many years until the global economy goes kerplunk again.

God save America from itself.

It appears that the crap economy is starting to hit my credit file, after having burned and pillaged my stock portfolio, my 401(k), and my Roth IRA.  

I generally run low balances on my credit cards and pay them off every month, and have never had a late payment on any of them.  So imagine my surprise when I get a letter from American Express indicating that my credit limit was cut from $30k to $5k due to something “adverse” on my credit report.  

I have three-bureau credit monitoring, and upon investigation, I discovered absolutely nothing different about any of my files.  A call to Amex netted me an obviously scripted response claiming that they had “found certain adverse information on my credit report.”  I told them that my own monitoring of the very same turned up no such adverse information other than the credit line decrease that she claimed was predicated upon said adverse infor … oh, would you look at that, a tautology!  How cute.  

A quick Google search returns a panoply of similar complaints against Amex, many quite colorful, some rather sad.  Speculation is rampant that due to their sickly financial condition, Amex has been aggressively and methodically contracting individual credit limits based on some seemingly esoteric criteria, such as billing address, number of children, and the phase of the moon.  (I made that last one up.)  I brought this speculation to my support rep’s attention.  Any connection to failing financial health, of course, was vehemently denied.  She reiterated that it was all my fault.

Strangely, BECU unilaterally increased my Visa Signature limit slightly about two months ago because of the very same “bad” credit Amex cited.  You know, if Amex can’t be up front about the real reason why they’re giving me a good shafting, I’m taking my business elsewhere.