Free money? In your dream!

I found an interesting ad spot on radio. One guy is wearing a clown outfit and explains his friend that he's short on money so he's working extra. His friend suggests that being a clown at children's birthday party can be a pain in the a** and he should rather get a loan on his car! Because at California Check Cashing there's a new product called Title Loan, where you bring in your car and you can keep it but you get some money (you'll have to pay back of course) based on your car's value.

Now check cashing is mainly used by less fortunate people with limited education... I understand that this is a free country, freedom of speech and capitalism and all, but this is just wrong.

And people are surprised that something like credit crunch can happen.

I understand that this is a new kind of credit product, and there's a market for that, but ads should be regulated not to suggest in any possible way that credit equals to free money. Because it isn't! It can confuse lot of people.

For a foreigner it is really hard to understand, but credit and credit cards play a whole different role here than in Europe. There's a whole bunch of special offers, introductory 0% APR, cash back, points, miles, discounts attached to them. You get a couple of prescreened offers in the mail every week. You need to have credit cards in case you want to buy a house in the future. You have to prove that you can handle credit with responsibility. Credit history, credit score all those things are important. A certain social class however gets into a credit trap and most likely can never ever get out of it. Also many offers are misleading, even someone I know with a university degree messed up his credit history, because he didn't realize that the special store offer came with a credit card, and he failed to pay back his balance on time. And this stays with him for up to 8 (?) years!

So credit is confusing, you need it, but you also need to be cautious, and you have to know what you're doing.

And then such an ad comes buy that tells you not to work but to get a loan... And how on Earth are you gonna pay that back? From another credit!? Most likely...