Credit card companies are canceling your account [2]. Student loans [3], home mortgages, and auto loans are all getting harder to obtain, and the big bank where I have an account is insolvent [4]; how about yours?  

Starting today, a range of next-generation financial services companies, all of whom employ technology in innovative ways, have teamed up to market some much-needed help to consumers with the Uncrunch America [5] campaign. Like a team of of financial Superfriends, Lending Club [6] offers personal loans through a peer-to-peer model, Virgin Money [7] (yes, a pro-social for-profit offshoot of the Branson empire) has peer-to-peer mortgage financing, OnDeck Capital [8] offers small business loans with a proprietary holistic scoring model, CreditKarma [9] has credit score tools, and Geezeo [10] offers personal finance and budgeting tools.Since the beginning of the year, UnCrunch members have lent almost $75 million to one another.

The site has an overwhelmingly grassroots, patriotic feeling and look, as though it were a stray page from MoveOn.org or recovery.gov. "The American people will solve the credit crisis by helping each other," it proclaims. 

Does this fine-sounding premise hold up? Peer-to-peer lending is one of the oldest ideas in finance. In its online incarnation, it doesn't have anything like the volume yet  to fill the trillion-dollar gap [11] in the consumer credit market. But it does offer an intriguing alternative to the standard profit-happy credit model, and it's been spreading as a close cousin of the microfinance or social lending movement. As a niche both for borrowers shut out of the credit market and for investors looking for a better return than the stock market can offer, it's likely to grow [12].

[via Uncrunch America [13]]