What credit crunch?

Well in today's mail, my tween son got an offer from Bank of America for a Platnum Plus credit card! Yep, he's pre-approved for a $100,000 line of credit. Well, to his credit (ahem) he does subscribe to several auto magazines and did just get a job. That job happens to be bringing the newspaper in for an elderly neighbor on weekends. Still, I don't think the meagre bucks it pays will cover the monthly minimum on 100 boxes of ziti. So what is this credit crunch everyone is talking about? How can banks and insurance companies be moaning when my grade school son can get $100K with a signature and a social security number?

A couple of days ago we met Louisiana painter George Rodrigue and his wife at their book signing for "Blue Dog Speaks".

http://www.georgerodrigue.com/

We were quite thrilled because after all, we did design our living room around his painting "God Bless America".

http://www.bluedogrelief.com/god_bless_america.html

(Honest, we designed our living room around a benefit painting for 9/11 relief. It's one of the rooms the realtor suggested we paint over before we try to sell the house.)

Anyway, Mr. Rodrigue has also done some amazing paintings to help provide relief for New Orleans after hurricaine Katrina, such as:

We will rise again: http://www.bluedogrelief.com/we%20will%20rise%20again.html

So I asked him something that I had been dying ask anyone from New Orleans since the banking crash: Was he surprised at the speed at which the government responded with a bailout? I also asked him if he planned on painting any benefit artwork for Wall Street. (At the moment, he is not.)

The book signing was wonderful, and Mr. Rodrigue was kind enough to sign our copy of the Lafayette, LA Junior League's cookbook "Talk about good, II" which features his early Cajun art.

http://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Lafayette-Junior-League/dp/0935032509

The best part was when he brought up local schoolchildren who had colored their own versions of the Blue Dog and told them "If you can paint a Blue Dog, you can paint anything."

I just hope I can paint myself up a mortgage when the time comes to move. I don't have to worry about the down payment: I'm sure our dog can get it as a cash advance on one of his credit cards.