I didn't say that all banks are great.

All I said is that we can't complain about our bank.
And the dealings we have had.

I can only speak about our personal experience.
I can't speak for anybody else.

Bless you, Toni ("I don't have a credit card"), neither have I, ever.

All that can be said about the original topic was already said long ago:

"Give us this day our daily bread... and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Are we over looking some thing? if it is true, and surely it is, banks are about to tighten credit, then they must think those in real trouble may have been let borrow too much?as with the sub prime event banks then will be in trouble when they can not get the money they lent back if a crisis comes? housing can not be different surely? while we say we owe nothing others do, a GFC will impact us all,banks included

It seems clear I took a different path in this thread, we have all but agreed we do not use cards and spend within our means, as we had no part to play in Americas sub Prime event that bought about the GFC, however we all felt that, less here than is some EU country's that have not yet recovered. long long ago we spoke of a housing bubble here, it did not, or has not yet, come, but it will history shows us it will, we will revisit this theme hopefully untouched by it, but it is time in my view to do any thing in your power to get debt down

Belly, Another reason I dislike Australia, is as you have pointed out and I think everyone knows, the elephant in the room, is another crash.
In the US, the housing finance terms of reference is basically, if you can't afford to repay your housing loan, you can choose to hand back the title and opt out of the loan.
I don't know of any penalty other than you walk away without any further commitment to that loan, but the bank or loan company now owns the house and whatever money you have sunk into it up until that day. In Aus, we do it differently because we have remnants of the convicts which is inbred in all generations since colonisation.
And that is, when an Aussie can't afford the house repayments and decides to hand the title over to the bank, because they're going to foreclose on him anyway, The bank says OK we will sell/auction your house off and you will still have to pay off the difference between what you owe and what we get for your house.
Now I don't know if these two scenarios are still current practices but that's what it was like.
Making the US, a much better, fairer and honest place to live by any stretch.
Aussies still had a noose around their necks.
Granted less than before but still a noose.
The other unbelievable thing about the US was that when the GFC hit and all these house titles ended up with the banks.
The Shires still wanted their rates and services paid for.
The banks found themselves in all kinds of bother, so they ended up handing over the title to these houses to the Shires.
The Shires realising they were not getting any more revenue from these houses, put them up for sale for what they owed them in rates.
People I know bought 20, 30, even 40 odd houses.
The prices ranged from say a few hundred (7-800) dollars to a few thousand (2-3000).
The new owners refurbished some and rented them out and just sat on the rest.

Aidan - Maybe you are wrong I did a search for Monopoly and got some pictures of money, but when I did a search for Fiat all I got was hundreds of pictures of cars.

Are you sure you have your information correct?