Well, I just got an e-mail today from BoA stating that my credit line was increased another $500, so I'm gonna say "bunk" too.

I can definitely see them shrink the credit lines but I can't see a reason to close accounts of people who are low risk and have low revolving balances. Sure high balance = higher risk they want to mitigate but to flat out close all accounts seems like a stretch.

Friend of mine got a call from BoA saying "We noticed you haven't paid your bill yet, even though it isn't due yet, can you tell us when your going to pay?" He just laughed and hung up. He pays the full balance every month, so the call was very odd.

@pmcpa2:

Thats just freaking sad.

"You're gonna pay your bill... right? RIGHT?!?!......please?"

@youbastid:
I also got a credit increase from them today as well.

I just can't see this happening. How can they milk you for unnecessary fees and mysterious overlimit charges and quietly jack your rate to 30% if your card is closed? In fact the problem is usually getting the [various bodily functions here] SOBs to actually close a card if you want them to.

@youbastid: Seconded, they increased mine by another $5k... gah! Like it was high enough already folks.

I heard a rumor that the United States Bullion Depository is moving out all of the gold reserves in armored train cars into a underground facility built during the cold war and that the operation is being personally supervised by Vice President Cheney. And that this is the real reason there are oil shortages in the South... because all the rail lines are being disrupted moving 10,000 metric tons of gold.

@twophrasebark: Did you see any black helicopters?

Hmm, BofA, the bank that even now is giving out (relatively) crazily high credit limits for the asking, and then increasing those pretty much anytime you like, just because you ask them nicely. The bank that sends us about 30 balance transfer/cash advance checks on a weekly basis, desperately trying to make us get into debt with them when we don't actually have any balances to transfer, and - what with not being certifiably insane and all - have no desire to take a cash advance on a credit card, ever.

I don't believe it for a second. BofA have evidently been exercising very little in the way of caution up until now, I can't quite see them turning around and acting in a way that would seem ultra-paranoid even for AmEx, never mind BofA.

I wouldn't be surprised to see them trim some of the uber-high credit lines they give out so routinely, though - were they to do that, it might actually be a sensible move on their part!

No way. This is totally ridiculous. Most credit card holders are not behind or in default. It would be massively unprofitable for them to do this.

LOL. That's how Cheney is supervising it. In one of the black helicopters.

How did you know?

This reminds me of the Simpsons episode when the teachers went on strike. Bart and Milhouse went down to the bank and started a riot. To paraphrase:
Bart creates havoc at a bank, calling out "What do you mean, the bank is out of money?", "Insolvent?!", and "You only have enough cash for the next three customers?" Everyone panics and rushes the glass, demanding an explanation. A Jimmy Stewart-like bank manager stammers, "I don't have your money here. It's at Bill's house and Fred's house!" A fight breaks out.

@twophrasebark: I hope you just made that up.

@twophrasebark: Or Odd Job....did you get to speak to Odd Job, or at least fondle his hat?

saying this DOES happen, what would happen to my debt? I'd assume I would have to pay it all back still, right? and what about interest? How would this work?

(Remember, this is IF this was true... so far, I think its fake...)

I heard a rumor that the real reason Senator McCain wanted to delay the first debate was because Mississippi and some other states were having talks about seceding from the United States and refusing to honor the 14th Amendment until the federal government made each regional reserve bank independently solvent.

And McCain was worried that if he was in Mississippi during the secession, then he might not be able to travel back into Washington in time for the election and would therefore be considered flectere si nequeo, absent from American soil and therefore ineligible for election.

@twophrasebark: That one is actually true, check snopes.

Got at email at 3:00 today from them encouraging me to transfer my balances over to my (now) Platinum card.... the one that gets shredded every time the send it.

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: Great line, and I remember Superintendent Chalmers punching some guy out during that fight.

@ratattak: You'd have to pay it back along with whatever the interest rate is set by your agreement (which is tied to the prime rate, so the actual number could change). The only change for you would be you couldn't charge any new debt.

@B:

I just called up BoA. They said it was a speculation "the telephone game" incident. and it is untrue. We shall find out in 2days...

This is not true. What is true is that BofA is only going to accept Ameros.

Is this the Conspiracy Rumorist?

@boomshakla: And Moe was like, "What's my money doing in your house!". Classic.

I heard this guy, Tyler Durden, has a plan to erase all of our debt in something called Operation May....I mean, I can't talk about it.

I heard a rumor that Sergey Brin and Larry Page have been seen at the White House every day since last Wednesday. The federal government is asking Google to "disrupt" the internet temporarily in order to delay consumers and business from doing financial transactions, ostensibly to give the Treasury Department sufficient time to resolve the current crisis.

In return Google will be given the right to process all domestic financial transactions. And to make sure that the public does not object, Brin is insisting that that no one announce the plan until 1/21/09, the day after the next President is sworn in.

3 words....

Canadian Tire Money

You're welcome

Im sure during all this mixup, the one thing that WONT be forgotten is how much money we all owe...

common sense, ethics, "the right thing" are all fair game though...

also, I am glad the solution to the banks lending money to people who can't pay it back (but might in the future...) isn't the government lending money to banks who can't pay it back (but might in the future...)

What will be interesting to see if this actually causes a bank run. Personally I laugh at people that dump good stock because of silly rumors.

Rumors have a nasty habit of coming true. Rule of thumb: If it's bad news, it will probably come true. For instance, layoff rumors always come true. Who needs credit cards anyway?

@BaronVonCrogs:

I call shenanigans.

Phishing? or... RUMOR!

I'm sure they have enough people flat out defaulting on their credit cards right now to not be wasting time calling on current accounts.

ps: I heard we're all going to die

pps: On the moon.

uhmm... hello! Everyone get out their history books and turn to past economic corrections. There always is a lag with credit cards and I do believe that most banks are now bracing for a wave of credit card write-offs.

Big companies can often do stupid things. They defy logic.

BofA is a big big company.

Never, I repeat... NEVER speak in absolutes.

Look. There's an underground city at Dulce Base in New Mexico. THAT'S WHERE ALL THE MONEY IS GOING.

@wagnerism: But we are all going to die. Possibly not all of us will be on the moon at the times of our several deaths.

Banks are not run by panicking 10 year olds (i hope). BoA is not about to close profitable accounts. They may however re-evaluate credit limits and future granting of credit.

It's like all these people saying "oh its going to be hard to get car loans etc." its just people spouting junk. Yes they are going to cut back on the riskiest borrowers, but anyone with half-decent credit is going to be OK. Only anecdotal evidence, but I got a car loan last Saturday and approved no problems and thats with an average credit score and not much down...

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: Purple monkey dishwasher.

Please, god, let them close them.

Hasn't anyone read the store about me not being able to close my BofA credit card.

Maybe that will make it official?

Let me debunk this real quick.

1) The guy can't spell his title correctly (analysist?)

2) He would out his building location instead of being a deep throat?

Thanks to consumerist posting this, they are gonna be on snopes real quickly, why are we adding fuel to a silly rumor fire?

"Banks are not run by panicking 10 year olds (i hope)." No they where ran by greedy evil assholes who have ruined the entire world economy at this point while the lot of them dived out of there and are on their way to various tropical islands free of getting their piggybanks broken and free of any guilt they have at ruining millions of peoples lives.

They only left the panicking 10 year olds to pick up their masters messes while the public tries to hang them.

@masonreloaded:

Same thing we found in May (admittedly, things are a lot different now to how they were in May, but still) when we bought our house. All we heard, from all directions, was about how impossible it was to get a mortgage, how lenders weren't lending, how only those with the most stellar of credit and enormous down payments would even be considered, and even then, with a really bad rate.

And here we are with our 6.1% 30 year fixed mortgage, obtained with fair-to-middling credit and a relatively small down payment. If I'd believed everything I was hearing/being told, we'd never even have tried.

That said, of course lenders are getting more picky about who they lend to, and how much they lend - which is a good thing, up to a point. Lending to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether they have a hope of paying it back, is clearly a bad thing - actually using the kind of lending standards that should have been there in the first place is not.

I can see why Bank of America would want to cut credit lines (not just close all the existing cards, but severely cut back people's available credit) - they offer some of the hugest credit lines out there, totally out of whack with an individual's annual income (of which I believe they rarely ask for proof in any case) - in the not-so-distant past, anyone with a bit of equity in their home and a HELOC had no need to run up credit card bills they couldn't pay. Not quite the same now, and any bank that's offering people the ability to go out and charge 50% of their salary on a credit card if they so desire, with no means of paying it back, well...

I know many of you feel concerned about the rumor. So I have a solution for those of you who are convinced the world is ending:

1. Withdraw all your money immediately.
2. Mail it to me for safekeeping.
3. Wait until the economy comes back. I promise I'll keep your money safe, just like all the big banks do.

Er...I guess that's not quite a selling point...

People are ridiculous.

Well, I guess that would make it easier to risk the temptation of paying for something now with the credit card and planning to pay it off on pay day.

So far I always do, but I always figured one day I wouldn't. If they close my account, no problem ; )

Bank of America lost the contract on GOVERNMENT travel credit cards to Chase. The new cards are rolling out on October 1st. This is probably where the rumor came from.

@twophrasebark: I heard there are actually 3 trains, so nobody knows which train the gold is on. Except mark wahlberg measured the ride height of all the trains, and figured it out, and is now planning an elaborate heist.

It was on TBS, so it must be true!

@Meiran: Credit cards don't work that way. If they close your account, you still have to pay off the debt.

@masonreloaded: well, actually i think that thing about getting car loans is somewhat true. here's a link to a recent story --> [money.cnn.com]

Almost all auto dealers recently surveyed by the industry newspaper Automotive News said they were having a harder time finding loans for customers with poor credit. About 60 percent said they having more trouble getting financing even for customers with good credit. [emphasis added]

this piece i heard on NPR today --> [www.npr.org] was quite interesting. it's talking about how the breakdown of the commercial paper market has caused a lot of problems with businesses throughout the country. one of the interviewees is a dealership owner who says he had to partially underwrite a loan for a customer with good credit - he had to agree to pay the first $3200 lost in the event of a repo!

sure, people can still buy houses & people can still buy cars & people can still get credit cards, but the number of people has slowed to a drip - partially due to the tightening of credit standards, partially due to us all sitting the fence until we're a little more certain of our future, but also because there are serious issues in our financial markets that have the potential to cause extensive long-term damage to the economy as a whole.

Really? I literally just got an email minutes ago about my BofA usair card and while I was expecting it say they decreased my limit (based on the earlier story with amex) they RAISED my limit?!?!?! Today?!

It'd be ironic if it was a short-seller trying to spark a rumor in these crazy times so that he can short BofA stock.
The irony, of course, is that short-selling financial stocks is furloughed for the duration.

Sort of like a bank robber that breaks in the premises, only to find that he forgot the acetylene tanks for his torch...