Ripped from the news ...

Fiction IS NOT stranger than truth. See my blog post “Financial Crisis Solution” from September 27, 2008.
Main Street America angry over credit crisis
Tue Sep 30, 2008 3:20pm EDT
By Andrea Hopkins
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.