RUSH: This is Ken in Bound Brook, New Jersey, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Good afternoon, Rush.
RUSH: Good afternoon.
CALLER: Great to speak with you. In any event, I’m responding to the story you spoke about earlier about this economics or financial analyst who claims that the people that are going to be hurt most by the credit downturn are poor and minorities. Well, the fact of the matter is that poor people don’t get new car loans, typically, because they can’t afford it.
RUSH: I wanted to have that stipulation out there. The story was really about the fact that the subprime mortgage crisis and the credit crunch in home mortgages is ready to bleed and spill over now to the purchase of automobiles. And of course the press, the Drive-Bys in their obligatory fashion, put it that it would be hardest on the poor and minorities. They left women out, didn’t quite fit.
CALLER: I guess they’re part of the minorities. But anyway, the fact of the matter is that credit crunch in mortgages has nothing to do with retail. Ford Motor Company credit, GM credit, you know, they all have their own lending unit. These guys can sell their own product and have historically done so in the past by financing their own sales. So anybody, if they need to, anybody with a heartbeat, will get a car loan. As far as the credit crunch or mortgage meltdown so-called, the fact of the matter is, it’s simply a credit meltdown, not a mortgage meltdown. The credit markets aren’t lending to certain credit levels.
RUSH: What people forget is that markets work. You could look at the so-called credit crunch, the subprime problem is a major correction going on here because of some things that were done that weren’t kosher. The markets work, if you just let them work themselves out. It’s the pain that’s caused in something like this that’s the problem.