Reply #25: Risk premiums are still there

[mastein]

They just are not advertised. Walk into any car dealership and they will have a rate card for several (usually 4) tiers of credit.

I agree with you that what needs to be looked at is where the growth is coming from. The answer is government spending. The gobberment (pun intended) increased its spending by 27% and most of it to support the war. So yes there are lots of higher paid engineering jobs and the like in Federal service and with contractors (read Haliburton in particular).

We can talk about the credit crunch in other terms as you did above, but it seems to me to be something of a separate issue.