Credit ratings
We all know how much a triple-A rating (or investment grade in general) is worth these days, just ask Lehman Brothers.
The weakening global economy and the tightening of credit for both companies and consumers is making it tougher for IT vendors to rely on a common tool - equipment leasing - to grease wheels and get sales. Defaults on tech leases - and indeed all kinds of capital equipment leases - are on the rise in the United States, and IT …
It is an unfair practice and comes with a risk, welcome to the risk unfair practitioners.
I think that is what gets my goat about all of this, the people are being made to bail out people who have acted irrationally, and with warning. All the twats who kept buying houses a few years back, all they were doing was making it harder for themselves and the country. And they were told in no uncertain terms, but they just ignored and carried on down their road of madness.
Same goes with this approach, small builders don't get a look in, people just buy the crude from the big box makers because they extend lines of credit. Well it is just unethical and will eventually come to bite them in the behind.
So ha, ha, ha. But boo from the normal person in the street, because the political aristocracy keep bailing these nutters out at our expense.
"Same goes with this approach, small builders don't get a look in, people just buy the crud from the big box makers because they extend lines of credit. Well it is just unethical and will eventually come to bite them in the behind."
No, people buy from the big box makers because they are cheaper and - since they are Big box makers as agaisnt someone's mate down the road - they simply *must* be safer and better at the job... You would have thought that some of these people would watch programmes like 'Watchdog' and 'Rogue Traders' and realise that "a-friend-o'-mine" recommendations are as reliable as a "big name ", and that even the big names rely on the quality of the workers who actually build the house, not the swish marketing campaign and the "hand-built" showhouse...
Perhaps more to the point, you get what you pay for. If you pay Joe Bloggs and his team of local builders, plumbers, electricians etc (apologies to any trade I missed ;-) to build you a house, you know where they live. If your mate recommended them after they built his house, you can see the work they did.
If you buy from a Big Name cos they've got a flashy model and a nice brochure in a Portakabin near the entrance to their (mostly still unbuilt) beautiful estate, you always run the risk they might not get around to actually putting in all the houses... or the roads... or the local amenities (like shops and schools...) they promised in their slick marketing campaign... like the poor buggers they had on telly last week.