Life's Tough When You're Dead

Spare a thought for Doris Gohman, a housewife from the tiny town of Clear Lake, Minnesota, who is officially dead.

She has been trying to persuade America's credit rating agencies that they are guilty of a clerical error ever since they registered her as deceased in 2004.

It was, in fact, her daughter who tragically died. But for Doris, proving the truth has involved two courtroom depositions and endless frustration with stone-walling bureaucracy.

Credit ratings have quasi-sacred status in America. Everybody has a score of between 300 and 850 (apart from Doris who, presumably, scores zero).

The number is determined by an opaque formula only partially available to the public and it is used far more often than such ratings in Britain - renting a flat, for example, is nigh on impossible without a decent credit score. A bad mark makes life very difficult indeed.

A new movie, Maxed Out, explores just how much power the credit industry exerts over American society.

The documentary, by director James Scurlock, argues that the nation has become drunk on borrowing. More Americans, Scurlock points out, will file for personal bankruptcy this year than will get divorced or graduate from college.

A kind of Fast Food Nation for the banking industry, Maxed Out hones in on financiers' most shameful acts - sending winsome offers to the mentally handicapped, dangling freebies in front of dirt-poor students and piling absurd fees on marginally late payments.

In one shocking scene, the mother of severely retarded 44-year-old man demonstrates how a salesman conned her son into signing a form refinancing their home with an unpayable mortgage - even though he can only write his own name in big, block capitals copied one by one.

Debt collectors cheerfully discuss their tactics on screen - one likes to call creditors' family members and neighbours in the hope of embarrassing cash-strapped customers into paying up. She cheerfully chirps: "It's not illegal!"

Most appalling are the stories of two college students who killed themselves after running up massive credit card debts.

The mother of one of them tells how, six years on, she continues to get letters from credit card companies.

Their computers have failed to digest the fact that their young client has died - so they spew out offers urging their lost customer to re-sign for a new card.

Britain's big banks are scrambling to get in on the act - just last month, Barclays splashed out on EquiFirst, an American specialist in "non-prime" loans.

The bosses of Barclays, HSBC and all of Britain's other banks dabbling in the US should take a trip to the cinema to see Maxed Out.

Go Mr President

There was a brief dip in volumes on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday lunchtime when George Bush toured the floor exchanging high fives with over-caffeinated traders.

With shouts of "go Mr President", Wall Street's finest roared their approval. There were chaotic scenes as the commander-in-chief made his way slowly to the Disney trading post, where he stopped for an animated chat with specialists.

Clearly, Wall Street dealers are among the few groups in American society still willing to extend unqualified enthusiasm towards Bush. The president was guided around the floor by the NYSE's chief executive, John Thain, whose broad grin suggested he was enjoying the moment.

A thoughtful, bespectacled character, Thain, 51, is an unabashed Republican - he is a leading fundraiser for John McCain's presidential campaign. But in private, he may not be Bush's biggest fan.

At a recent round-table for British journalists at the NYSE, small talk turned to Bob Woodward's eviscerating indictment of the administration's foreign policy, State of Denial.

Thain enthusiastically endorsed Woodward's work and promptly recommended another - "Fiasco: the American military adventure in Iraq".

Written by the Washington Post journalist Thomas Ricks, this book slams Bush and his government colleagues for "the worst war plan in American history".

Wonder if that came up in conversation on Wednesday?

What's in Greenspan's lunchbox?

Former Federal Reserve governor Alan Greenspan was in jovial form as he picked up a lifetime achievement award for leadership from CNBC.

The 80-year-old, who became an unpaid adviser to Gordon Brown after retiring from his day job last year, addressed an intriguing question - the briefcase indicator.

Based on careful observation, television pundits long maintained that if Greenspan was carrying a thick, bulging briefcase on the morning of a Fed committee meeting then interest rates were going to change.

A thin case meant he had little need for evidence to make his case and rates were to remain frozen and on such tiny signals, stocks allegedly rose or fell.

Greenspan this week shot this out of the water, telling his audience that his briefcase's girth was largely down to his wife.

"My wife put a very large piece of chocolate cake in my lunch pack," said Greenspan. "It knocked billions of dollars off the nation's net worth."