Our Current Economic Unpleasantness took an interesting and mildly twisted turn in my household the other day, when my wife and I got a little letter from E-Trade Financial. We have a home equity line of credit with E-Trade, which I set up as a source of emergency funds years ago.

We’ve only used it once, to finance a replacement air conditioning system for the house, and it currently has no balance. But it’s a fairly hefty line at prime rate, and with prime obscenely low right now, this is practically free money. It’s currently a crappy deal for E-Trade, and they know it.

Thus, the letter. “Given your excellent history with us, we would like to give you an opportunity to voluntarily close this line,” our E-Trade friends write. “As a special limited time offer, we will send you a check for $200 if you decide to close your line. In addition, we will waive any penalty charges for early closure, if applicable, which may save you up to $300 in early termination fees.”

Such a deal. They’re not going to make us pay to close the line they want us to close. In fact, they’re even going to pay us for the honor and privilege of ending a deal that no longer works very well for them.

Not long ago, every financial institution on the face of the sun was begging to throw credit at people. Now they want it all back. For my wife and me, nothing has changed between those two banking extremes. I threw the letter away.