All the old credit that's on your credit report that the banks have written off and got credit for is still there.  In the pass people was given a chance to start over.  FRESH . Debt was forgiven.  Due to what tremendous crisis that we are in now, we can not go forward until this has been addressed .  You can't give big business a chance to start over and ignore the everyday people. How can credit start flowing again if everyone has bad credit.