Left In Lowell

The question we should be asking is, is our medias learning?

Today brought a whole new perspective from the front lines of lending. At my weekly business networking meeting, I talked to a friend who is in the mortgage business. “Is it true that no one is lending money?” I asked. “I keep hearing that main street is in danger of not being able to get loans for a car or house with this crisis.”

My friend completely debunked that. For one thing, he did just fine (had one of his best months even) in September (of course, he carefully builds his business via a sustainable methodology, which has a lot to do with his growth while other lending outfits contract). For another, he says, it’s no harder to get a loan this week than any other week. The big problem is that lenders, including FHA, have been and are being super-tight with their lending requirements…unreasonable even. But if you have decent credit and some up-front resources, you can still get a loan. He says the media is just overhyper and trying to scare everyone (I think it has more to do with the fact that OMG CRISIS sells ads, and there’s nothing the media likes more than a juicy exciting story, it titillates them) but that the credit crisis is not hitting his business. There are mortgage outfits who have gone under and he’s had to adjust what he can offer his clients, but the money is there to lend.

So is this crisis really a crisis, or hyped and manufactured by Paulson/Bush/media for one reason or another? One guy on the ground selling loans says, no way, it’s overblown.

Now how that relates to the big corporations who do all the short-term borrowing and if they are frozen in time without capital, I’m not sure, but this ain’t hitting Main Street yet, at least according to my friend.