Essentially the Only One

Jerry Tao, a part-time lawyer and spokesman for Evofi One's parent company, lost access to his $50,000 Countrywide line despite earning more than $500,000 last year and having a credit score he says was between 750 and 770.

Though he never accessed the line, Tao, 40, said he'd hoped to redo his backyard and replace his 1995 Nissan Pathfinder.

You read the most extraordinary things in the business press where some mortals seem to roam an alternate universe.

This article, essentially about Countrywide abolishing home equity lines of credit in areas of precipitous property value decline (e.g. Las Vegas, Chicago etc.), threw this little 'human interest' tid-bit in.

What makes no sense to me is how Mr. Tao, having earned half a million dollars last year, finds it necessary at all to borrow to replace his car (a commendably aged vehicle) and fix his backyard.

This suggests to me that either he did not really make as much as the article quotes, or that he spends an astonishingly large amount of money in his daily life. Or maybe his backyard is 100 acres.
He lives in Las Vegas - perhaps that is the clue...

In any case, stories like this are so far outside the realm that I inhabit that I just have to shake my head at the nuttiness of it all.