Had the loans had a very high chance of being paid, there would be a much smaller pool of loans and little chance of cashing in on the volume caused by lending to a pool of sub-standard borrowers.

These people don't have a clue, and it's why I can't spend Sunday morning watching them anymore.  Give me Ree Drummond and Trisha Yearwood cookin' up something tasty any day over Tim Geithner cookin' up a big plate of crap and getting his feelings hurt because no one appreciates his effort.

I've actually had one for years now, and it's a rather easy and convenient way to rack up the mileage. It paid off handsomely when Elder Daughter was going to college back east, because we usually had more than enough miles to bring her home for the holiday and summer breaks and conveniently, Hawaiian flies nonstop between Honolulu and New York-JFK. It easily saved us thousands of dollars which we would've had to otherwise fork over in air fare.

(But I do adhere to one personal and very ironclad rule with my credit card, which is that I never charge anything on it that I can't afford to pay off in 30 days. That allows me to avoid the usury fees that pass for credit card interest rates nowadays.)

Personally, I find such cross-marketing to a captive audience like aircraft passengers be rather intrusive and annoying, and I complained to Hawaiian's corporate management when the flight attendants starting passing out the credit card application forms while we were inflight. Apparently lots of other people complained, too, because Hawaiian recently stopped doing that on its flights, and now only posts magazine-type ads at the airport check-in kiosks.