I’d like to pose a question. Now, I’m completely serious here. I know I don’t have 300 million readers on this blog, but I do know that there are many more readers than usually comment. You lurkers, you know who you are. Well, I need to you stop hiding and comment on this one.

The end-of-the-world credit crisis that has sprung on us in the last week, according to all the people who are supposed to know, is primarily due to the failing credit market. That is to say, the trillions of dollars* that are about to be spent** are supposed to recapitalize the lending market. We (doing business as the US government) are going to give all that money to banks, so that those banks can keep lending money (for cars, houses, tuition, Christmas presents, and pedicures) and if we don’t bail-out the banks, they’ll quit loaning money and the economy will collapse, because, we all know, Americans can’t live their lives without credit.

Today on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, about half a dozen callers said that they had recently received loans, some in the tens of thousands of dollars, and most with no down payment and very reasonable interest.  I personally talked to a mortgage broker last weekend, asking for advice about my own plans to purchase a home next year. He said that business is brisk, virtually unchanged in the last few years. No one is having problems getting loans.

So here’s what I need you, my faithful readers, to do: Please find someone (anyone) who, despite being gainfully employed with good credit and a reasonable expectation to repay, has been turned down for a loan in the last month. Shoot, I’ll even give you the last six months. I want specifics. I want to know the name of the lending organization, the name of the person turned down, the type of the loan, and the reason given for declining the application.

I predict that I will not get any responses that meet these requirements. So, why, pray tell, is this bail-out bill so direly necessary? Did you hear that? Did you hear someone just crying, “Wolf?” I’m pretty sure I did.

* Yours and mine
** As much as I am against this bail-out, I have to be realistic, it’s going to pass eventually.