Credit Crunch Continues, and So Do Ads

As the credit crunch transforms the financial landscape, one thing hasn't changed: lenders continue to offer loans that are too good to be true. The Washington Post writes that mortgage companies are still offering risky products to risky customers—even Countrywide, which barely avoided bankruptcy, is flogging cheap money with the slogan "We make it easy!"

Though the loans have disappeared the ads wear on. The nicest way to describe these companies is that they are optimists, says one analyst. "Even if they get a customer in the door this way, it's going to be a lot harder to qualify that customer than it was six months ago." (More subprime mortgages stories.)