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UPDATE from “Life After Bankruptcy, Part 4″ re: “Second-Chance Auto Loans”:

If your bankruptcy protection plans include keeping a vehicle that you’re paying off via an auto loan, make sure you understand about the reaffirmation agreement. Not understanding this crucial aspect can be a costly mistake later down the road.  Here’s three good links to columns about autos and reaffirmation agreements, one here, another here, and another here. Following is an excerpt from the second column:

A reaffirmation agreement is a legally enforceable contract filed with the bankruptcy court that states your promise to repay all or a portion of a debt that may otherwise have been subject to discharge in your bankruptcy case. Some lenders demand that you sign this agreement and will not send you statements or report payments to the credit bureau without the court-approved agreement. In many instances, lenders consider it a breach of the terms of your loan and will repossess the car if you fail to sign the agreement.

There are some lenders who will allow you to keep the car and continue to make regular monthly payments. Unfortunately, this also means that future payments might not be reported on your credit report. You will be able to pay off the car and eventually receive the vehicle title, but you might not see any benefit to your credit for all those payments.

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What are we to make of the Senate’s action to ditch the extension of unemployment benefits?

For the horde of folks facing foreclosure, unemployment, bankruptcy–and God only knows what else in this misnomer of a recovery–the partisan voting lines and continued reliance on the stealth filibuster must taste something awfully like betrayal.

The Socialists, or more accurately, at least one Socialist Web site blames the Democrats in the Senate and President Obama, pinning the following headline atop its coverage of the vote that leaves more than one million unemployed staring down the double barrels of a 12-gauge economic threat:

Senate Democrats and Obama abandon the jobless

Here’s the first two grafs from that June 26 account:

“Senate Democrats gave up efforts to extend unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers after the third vote on overcoming a Republican filibuster failed. The final vote Thursday was 57 to 41, three votes short of the 60 necessary to cut off debate, with one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joining a unanimous Republican opposition.

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose home state, Nevada, has the highest unemployment rate in the country, indicated there would be no further effort to revive the unemployment benefit extension unless one or more Republican senators expressed willingness to change their position. ‘We can’t pass it unless we get some Republicans,’ Reid told reporters. ‘It’s up to them.’ “

Reading thus far, one wonders if the headline writer simply bonked out…or purposely jumped the fence. For instance, here’s the June 24 hed and lede covering the same event by the decidedly capitalist Bloomberg BusinessWeek:

Republicans Kill Unemployment Aid, Buyout Tax Boost

“Senate Republicans killed legislation to extend unemployment benefits, provide aid to state governments and increase taxes on buyout fund managers, saying the bill would add too much to the federal deficit.

“Today’s vote was 57-41 in favor of the measure, with 60 needed to advance it. Democrats repeatedly cut the bill in an effort to win over lawmakers who objected to its cost. The latest version version would have added $33 billion to the budget shortfall, a fraction of previous proposals; Republicans said the cost-cutting didn’t go far enough.”

But, no, apparently the hed writer at the Socialist site was working from the writer’s copy. In the fourth graf, the writer all but ignores the concerted GOP effort to kill the benefits extension–and blames the Democrats while glossing over the fact that 60 votes are needed for the cloture to overcome the filibuster:

“While the Democrats, who control the Senate by a 59 to 41 majority, whine about Republican opposition, some 200,000 unemployed workers are losing extended benefits each week. The total number cut off benefits since June 2, when the last such extension expired, reached 1.2 million Friday.  Assuming the deadlock continues, a total of 5.7 million workers will lose extended benefits by the time the program expires completely in November.”

So what are the Dems supposed to do? Beat ‘em up? Egg their cars? It’s obvious they can’t be shamed into caring about economically ravaged consumers. Remember, it was basically this same Senate that refused to budge last year when they could have passed reforms allowing bankruptcy judges to modify terms of loans on primary residences.

According to the BusinessWeek piece, Senator Baucus hopes for pressure from the public to launch support for a benefits extension as a separate, stand-alone measure: “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said he didn’t know if lawmakers would try to pass an unemployment benefit extension as a separate measure. The bill derailed yesterday would have continued some extended jobless benefits through November.

“ ‘We’ll have to take stock and see,’ Baucus said. ‘I hope frankly that enough people in the country realize what’s going on here and call members of the Senate on the Republican side and say, “Hey, we need some help here.” ‘ ”

On the other hand, maybe the Dems could force the balky mules to go through the pain of an actual filibuster–the stealth filibuster has got to go.