[cobra de capell]

The last part of your post is believable, but....

The banks are the root of this problem with the credit crisis, they have trapped themselves in a situation where they could not lend the money to GM even if they wanted to.

Ford was lucky and refinanced their lines of credit prior to the financial crisis. GM and Chrysler had bad timing for their refinancing.

The banks have also refused financing to many consumers who would have lined up to purchase/lease new cars, but now they cannot. Causing pain to all automakers selling cars in the US. Plus you have the recession now.

This all started with Congress; Freddie and Fannie and went downhill fast. Those entities relaxed the credit standards to a point that if your breath showed up on a mirror, you qualified for a home loan. Banks enter this puzzle through CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) )through threats by Congress) - money needed to be loans to poor people in a big way. Therefore: Housing/no qualifying/poor people = disaster.

Car loans - I was recently working at a bank that made car loans - big time. The only people that were turning down were in the under 650 FICO score range. Yes, credit standards were increased, but isn't that the right thing to do? The public should not have to step up to buy houses and cars for everyone, correct?