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Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mc32 7y agoIf they do this, it has to be like the FED. Absolutely independent from any political interference. Not allowed to sell data and be rigorous about user data. Also, find an alternative to SSNs for base ID for people. On the other hand, it must not transform into what the CCP is doing. It has to stay true to being a proxy for credit worthiness —that is all. No handicapping either or dings for "unapproved" ideas, behavior, purchases, etc.
- RandomInteger4 7y agoIt will transform into what the CCP is doing. There is nothing else that can come out of such a move.
- sieabahlpark 7y agoYou know it absolutely would be used to target political opponents from both sides.
- nappy 7y agoThe performance of the IRS is a strong counterargument to this.
- abtinf 7y agoThe IRS has done this exact thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
- freddie_mercury 7y ago"In January 2014, James Comey, who at the time was the FBI director, told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. On September 8, 2017, the Trump Justice Department declined to reopen the criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy."
- sverige 7y agoActually, no, it isn't. Many conservative organizations were targeted by the IRS under the previous administration. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-...
- Swenrekcah 7y agoIs it possible that it was due to warranted concerns that these groups were misusing the tax-exempt status?
- sverige 7y agoIt seems possible until you realize that the IRS publicly apologized for targeting them and paid a settlement to 427 of the organizations. Four hundred twenty-seven is far beyond any random accident or mistake.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoNo, I mean sure, if you think a conservative administration settling with conservative groups is a valid admission of guilt, go for it! But for many of us, it just seems like Trump trying to define truth unilaterally to pander to his base. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy Spoiler: both liberal and conservative groups were subject to extra scrutiny via keyword triggers, but only conservative groups got a settlement for whatever reason only Trump knows. Trump was smart enough not to let it go to court (lest any facts get argued for real).
- Fjolsvith 7y ago> No, I mean sure, if you think a conservative administration settling with conservative groups is a valid admission of guilt, For the actions committed under the previous liberal administration.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoWhen was the last time the OPM and it’s data corpus was weaponized politically (data breach incompetence aside)?
- abtinf 7y agoTrump revoking security clearances for nakedly partisan purposes. That isn’t a use of the OPM data, but what it enables. It is easy to imagine a future administration blacklisting political opponents from obtaining mortgages.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThis can already be done with voting and party affiliation records and mortgage guidelines administered by FHFA (Fannie/Freddie/HUD), but isn’t. Government is accountable to an electorate, private businesses are not (see: Equifax).
- abtinf 7y agoIf government is so accountable, why are there only three credit rating agencies? Why does equifax still exist? Government created this oligopoly and won’t let any new players into the market.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoAnyone can start a CRA, there is no legislation or regulation stopping competitors from popping up, although I agree it’s government’s fault there is no legislation to provide a corporate death sentence for egregious data breaches.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoYep. Just like the FDIC was against the gun industry.
- olliej 7y agoI'm not sure that this is wholly superior, but given the apparent need for credit agencies and the zero liability for them misreporting information, the extortion, and the functionally zero cost to them when they leak information on more or less every American maybe this is the best option? OTOH Governments have a tendency to pass laws the make suing them very hard even when they do screw up, so who knows what the ideal solution is?
- dumbfoundded 7y agoAwful idea. Having the government giving you a rating, even just for loans is way too far. Politics shouldn't impact my ability to pay but it certainly will. Look at the games Republicans play to suppress minority voters. You want to give those same people power over your credit scores? This is just trying to solve a symptom with a deeper problem. The real problem is that our judicial system is absolutely cowardly towards corporation prosecution. If you actually just sent the responsible people to jail or actually bankrupted the worst actors, the situation would improve. This impacts everything from the financial industry to oil & gas to credit to privacy rights on the internet. All of these companies get away with anything they want because we don't send the execs to jail and we rarely fine them more than the profits they made from doing the bad thing.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoCredit reporting agencies don’t give a “rating”. They keep a record of whether or not you pay debts in a timely manner or not.
- binarymax 7y agoThey absolutely do provide a rating. Equifax, Transunion, and others provide a FICO score (or similar) based on the data they have.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI meant as their primary purpose, if the government were to offer a similar service. They all started selling scores recently, but lenders don’t necessarily use that, they look at the details themselves and come up with a decision on whether or not to lend.
- caseysoftware 7y agoThat's not accurate. I just finished my home refinance two weeks ago. First, my score qualified me into a certain set of options (rates, points, etc) then they asked about specific details of the report after. But the score is the first pass/qualification.
- propter_hoc 7y agoThanks, but I'd rather the government not collect all this sensitive, personal information. In fact, I'd rather nobody collect it. It's kind of shocking in the first place that our banks and lenders are allowed to release such personal information to a credit bureau without our opt-in. I'd rather Sanders focus on legislating a right to privacy, rather than for the government to take over a role that shouldn't exist.
- mc32 7y agoThe system firs lubricate money. Otherwise things would be like medical records where you have ask for a transfer, but it’d be worse. Unless you didn’t need credit (loans of any type).
- nostromo 7y ago> without our opt-in You do opt-in when you sign credit agreements and the like. Since all creditors require it your options are to opt-in to credit reporting or opt-out of borrowing.
- guerrilla 7y ago> when you sign credit agreement if. So I'm not tracked if I've never taken a loan or credit card?
- Fezzik 7y agoThat is correct, sort of. If you have never had a credit card or taken out an auto loan (or student loan, or mortgage,etc...) then there are no data points on your credit report. You are still "tracked" though - you would simply have a low credit score because there is no data to determine your credit worthiness.
- propter_hoc 7y agoRight, that's what I'm saying should be legislated to be optional. I don't think citizens should be forced to make that choice. Frankly, I think it might even be best to forbid a third party from collecting a borrower's personal information as a condition of a lender providing a personal financial product. I will in advance disagree with the objection that this would make it impossible for the lending industry to operate. I have run a lending business before, and in the industry FICO score is much less valuable than a lot of other information available to lenders (demographic, income, assets). For asset-based lending (car loans, mortgages, etc), FICO is even more irrelevant compared to factors like loan-to-value.
- PeCaN 7y agoHow long until they also replace background check agencies with a public social credit registry :-)
- JoshTriplett 7y agoIn a way they do (minus the "public"). The Global Entry program uses opaque trustworthiness criteria to decide who should get less screening at airports.
- joegahona 7y ago> Under this proposal, Americans would be able to receive credit scores for free I have never paid to see my credit score, so I'm not sure how this is novel? Also, are things not going well at Vox? 900px (height!) of ads at the top of the page along with Outbrain trash and numerous right-rail ads and inside-the-content ads (on desktop) do not give the impression of a thriving publication.
- caseysoftware 7y agoRe: the ads - Facebook & Google are playing games and playing them dirtier than ever before: https://thechive.com/2019/09/19/facebook-and-google-are-currently-playing-their-toxic-endgame-10-photos/ https://thechive.com/2019/09/19/facebook-and-google-are-curr...
- dmix 7y agoGoogle really has been pushing the limits of their customers tolerance for their advertising recently. Has there been some management change or is this just another stock boosting attempt to mask the plateauing which happens to every business? I guess they've given up the constraint and minimalism that helped them get to #1 in the first place. Once again the obsession with never ending growth is compromising the utility of the top players and pressures the regulators to do something. Google should be happy there are ad blockers, otherwise there'd be a lot more outcry and pushback from the influential tech community.
- bearjaws 7y agoIf you are using a "free" e.g. credit karma, Mint, credit monitoring service, you are paying via giving away your information, its not free. You're the product being sold.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- caseysoftware 7y agoThe terrorist watch list is a good example of how the government runs and rates "risks" within its clear jurisdictional areas: https://www.thetrace.org/2016/06/fbi-terrorist-watch-list-guns/ https://www.thetrace.org/2016/06/fbi-terrorist-watch-list-gu... Here's the key quote: > "Last year, the The Intercept published a government document that spelled out the process for putting suspects in the terrorist database. The guidelines say agencies can nominate candidates for the list if there is “reasonable suspicion” to believe they are a “known or suspected terrorist.” That’s a relatively low bar, and the guidelines even make clear that agencies don’t need “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to back up their assertions. The guidelines also give a single White House official unilateral authority to place entire categories of people on the no-fly list." We can only guess whether the public credit registry will be run with the same, better, or worse level of care and due diligence. And before you say "omg Trump!!11" note that this article is from June 2016 and the leaked guidelines are from March 2013.
- RandomInteger4 7y agoSo he basically wants to implement communist china's dystopian social credit system? "b-b-but, it's only financial credit! The story didn't say social credit! Slippery slope! SlIpPeRy SlOpE!" I hear you say. Is it though? Is it really beyond the realm of possibility for you, my hypothetical dissenter, from seeing how real and non-fallacious such a slippery slope is in this scenario?
- fzeroracer 7y agoWith how awful credit scoring is in the US, this is probably the only option going forward to actually fix it. Right now there's nothing stopping credit scores from being heavily politicized anyways, it's just a few bribes and favors away. Allowing private companies to control this information hasn't fixed anything at all and just left our information even more vulnerable to leaks or being sold. The rest of his plan involves shrinking the usage of credit scores so that it doesn't affect employment, housing or insurance so I imagine this would lead (ideally) to the general phasing out of the ubiquitous credit scoring nonsense we have to deal with.
- deelowe 7y agoI can't figure out if Bernie is a government shill or just too dumb to o understand the implications of what he's suggesting.
- mighty_bander 7y agoIt's interesting seeing the American perspective on this. The perpetual mistrust of government would, I think, be warranted were that government not elected by the populace. As it is, I am a little confused why the same skepticism is not directed at the for-profit entities now operating the credit scoring system.
- guerrilla 7y ago> As it is, I am a little confused why the same skepticism is not directed at the for-profit entities now operating the credit scoring system. Effective PR?
- pinneycolton 7y agoRemember that half the population loves the government, half hates it, and they think both one another are evil incarnate. Logic breaks down a bit when that kind of irrational vitriol enters the equation.
- AlgorithmicTime 7y agoWhat government is elected by the people? A few high level people - legislators, governors, presidents, mayors. I don't get to vote on the director of the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the local Code Enforcement Officer, or the Chief of Police. Those are the more relevant officials, and they're shielded from responsibility for their actions by layers of bureaucracy. If you want me to believe government is accountable, make all government positions subject to popular vote and recall.
- maehwasu 7y agoThe government is elected by about a quarter of the populace, and even the winning quarter is often dissatisfied at the lack of control it exerts over its representatives. Democratic representation is one of the leakiest abstractions ever devised.
- mxcrossb 7y agoThe main goal of restricting a governments power isn’t to stop corruption, but to prevent tyranny of the majority [1]. A government elected by the populace is little comfort to minorities. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- kebman 7y agoIf you look to Bernie's wonderworld, Norway (where I'm from), all that is taken care of privately. However the credit and debt registry companies are obliged by law to inform customers when a check-up is done on them. It's quite painless, and it's a service completely paid for by the finance industry, instead of being a poorly run and corruption prone state owned and agency financed by tax money. The debt registry can perhaps become a nuiscance to a small subset of bank customers, but only those who take on added risk by loading up on big loans and credit lines at many different institutions.
- nickthemagicman 7y agoWhy aren't private corporations corruption prone? They're the ones DOING the corrupting! But somehow we feel they're better than government? Every 'appropriately funded' govt service I've used has been miles away better than the equivalent private service. Schools, hospitals, research facilities, police, student loan management company etc etc
- kebman 7y agoOh, they are, of course, like anyone else. But they have directly paying clients to please, and thus they have a much more important reputation to keep. If any foul play is caught, they stand to lose business, and thus money, while political slights might only cause the odd head or two to roll. And so, barring the bad apple or two, it tends to happen less often as long as the conditions for competition are fair. On the other hand, a state-owned agency is often very bureaucratic, and thus it has built-in deficiensies and resource hungry regulatives that slow things down to a crawl. All that does is to incentivice paying for speed, which would of course be corruption. On top of that, private companies aren't subject to change every time Government changes, and leadership change within the private sector tend to be efficiency / profit centered, while Government change is much more complex, and often based on quaint special interests that need to be politically pleased. Or the bar is set higher for it to happen, because politically changing the policies of private companies would involves actual laws that need to be voted in, rather than departmentally set regulatives.
- remarkEon 7y ago
- tempsy 7y agoI think people would somewhat rightfully make comparisons to China’s social credit rating system. I like the idea of killing off the existing credit rating industry, though. I would prefer it just be heavily regulated as a utility and run by an entity outside the gov.
- Simulacra 7y agoSounds too much like a social credit system.
- egdod 7y agoSounds a lot like the creepy Black Mirror shit China is doing.
- wastman 7y agoCompanies like Equifax are already selling your credit data and handling it irresponsibly. I'd rather have my credit data be held by the government than the idiots at Equifax.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- egdod 7y agoI’m not thrilled with Equifax, but I have a hard time believing bureaucrats are the solution.
- jeffdavis 7y agoI think a lot of people miss that federalizing things creates a monopoly, and it's less different from a private monopoly than we might like to think. It is a democratic monopoly, but democracy among 300+ million people is a big hammer. Do you really, actually think that this will be a well-run service where mistakes are quickly corrected? No. It will just be an extra layer of protection for any mistakes that are made. At least private companies have to fear the government at some level... who does the federal government fear when it does somethihn unfair? The voter? Hah.
- 693471 7y agoFederalizing means all Americans are voting shareholders but the goal isn't to make a profit. There are lots of situations where I think that is preferred, but people won't look at it this way because of socialism/communism scare.
- jonahbenton 7y agoRe: "a public, transparent algorithm to determine creditworthiness that eliminates racial biases in credit scores.” Eliminating racial bias is admirable, but is not a thing that we have any idea how to do in any computationally rigorous way, certainly not as assumed in that language. Modern credit scoring for anything that matters involves lender and context specific analytics. It's a much richer process than the imagined single monolithic FICO score. In this world, giving a single entity a monopoly in generating these bespoke scores is, simply for mechanical reasons, a complete non-starter. The way to deal with profit-oriented lenders making what seem to be unfair credit decisions is to have a credit process that solves for fairness, not profit. That amounts to starting from a place of making capital grants, something the government is very good at, and which would be a better angle for Bernie to be taking. Andrew Yang's UBI proposal could be tweaked to optionally, at the receivers request, treat the grants in part as low interest rate loans, allowing receivers to create a credit history if they so desire.
- no_wizard 7y agoHaving known lots of people in the lending industry not a single one of them believes that the current credit rating system (with many I’ve talked to pointing out FICO in particularly) had any real net positive impact on the average person not so they seem to believe that banks or other lending institutions have derived any other even fit than a loophole for setting interest rates high for as many people as possible. I think we should just go back to what we did before credit ratings, which was basically best due diligence and requiring just a little bit more documentation for a loan application I also think in lieu of this the government can be a net positive here. In the EU this is the norm from what I understand
- solipsism 7y agoa loophole for setting interest rates high for as many people as possible. This makes no sense. Banks can set whatever interest rate they want. It's in their best interest to give trustworthy people as low as interest rate as they can.
- no_wizard 7y agoActually the rate was capped until the supreme ruled otherwise https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/marquette-interest-rate-usury-laws-credit-cards-1282.php https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/marquette-inter... Traditionally there were hard ceilings on acceptable interest rates in most circumstances. After the Supreme Court ruling however this was no longer the case as companies could setup shop in a friendly state that had high interest rate ceilings. This is the reason so many lending outfits are based in South Dakota (on paper at least) as they were the first state that took advantage of this. Now when FICO became a thing in 1989 it’s one expressive goal was to maximize this opportunity to give lenders an optimal (e.g highest) rates they could charge customers for their loans. It doesn’t help the consumer at all in this regard.
- randycupertino 7y agoHaving worked as an apartment manager, I can say that credit ratings were the single best factor for selecting a good tenant. I gave three tenants with bad credit a shot (single mom I felt bad for, blue color couple who seemed really nice and hardworking at screening and a couple who moved from abroad and had no credit at all) and I got burned by all of them ending up missing rent and needing to evict, sob stories and late rent, or causing other problems and fighting with their neighbors. After those experiences I basically only selected people above 750 to for our units and it always seemed like the higher the credit score yielded us responsible tenants who paid on time, didn't cause headaches at the building and left their units in good condition when they moved out. As an aside, one interesting thing I noticed over the years fielding applications for open units, EVERY single person in the world who has bad credit or subpar credit apparently has the same psycho ex. It was rather amusing hearing that story over and over again. If you have poor credit and you're trying to rent a place- own up to it and be honest about why it's bad!
- jakeogh 7y agoAh. The China model. Piecewise. Shocking /s.
- someonehere 7y agoName one program the government has been In charge of where there isn’t some form of widespread corruption or bogged down by red tape. You want the government to give us a number like China? No thank you. I like my free will. It may be limited digitally, financially, and geographically, but I’m still happy with the government not assigning me a number.
- otachack 7y agoWhat's a SSN in your view, then?
- throwawaysea 7y agoWhy are credit scores “racist” (as claimed by Sanders and Vox)? The outcomes being distributed differently among races does not make the methodology “racist”. The input factors into credit scores do not include race. Correlation to race, even if strong, is not causation.
- reureu 7y agoIf you're interested in this topic, you should look at "Weapons of Math Destruction." It's a question of if the outcomes are distributed differently among races because the races represent truly different probabilities, or because the inputs to the model were already tainted against some race. For example, let's say you judge creditworthiness based on membership in a particular honors society, but that honors society doesn't exist at historically black colleges.
- gizmo686 7y agoIn the latter case, the solution is racism. If the non racial signals are biased against group X, then, when used in the context of those other signals, membership in group X becomes a positive signal, regardless of its independent signal. I believe there was a time when the military did precisly this for black SAT (or simmilar) score, because they found the same score tender to be smarter when it was a black person.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoLeave them private but make legally liable for leaks and for the bad info. That mistake cost you dearly so make the registries pay.
- zxcvbn4038 7y agoI love the idea of disrupting the for profit credit reporting industry. I don’t know that the government would do any better, but knocking the other guys off the map is a great start. It’s been decades since the FCRA was passed (specifically to reign in Equifax which operated more or less like the everyman’s TMZ at the time and would even pay for people to go through neighbors garbage) and it has had little impact. The big three credit bureaus are constantly sued and reprimanded and they just ignore it. Let’s try something else.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoHuge support of Sanders.. I love and hate this idea... Love the idea of a totally open credit bureau that values privacy and does not use medical loans against us. And has full transparency.... I do however not trust the government as we've seen w/ Trump it could easily swing from leftist egalitarianism to rightist fascism in 1-2 election cycles. Then they could use credit scores as a weapon. I think instead the government should create a regulation platform for credit agencies where they must follow certain principles to be allowed to operate as such including: * No medical debt. * Full transparency on how credit scores are scored -- perhaps even being required to use a government sanctioned algorithm. * Free credit reports to consumers and other tooling. * Must provide free counselling and support to consumers. * May make profit from government grants + charging businesses for report access. * Must offer ways to notify consumers when their reports have been accessed, by who, and when, and allow consumer to revoke and remove access at will. * Must be protect privacy EVEN from government agencies, to ensure highest level of security for consumers. Edit: a nice addition would be if they did have more integrations with government programs though, so say every citizen in the credit system is an automatically registered voter in their most recent locale.
- wpdev_63 7y agoSocial credit score? You mean like china?....
- hansdieter1337 7y agoCommunism!!!
- wilg 7y agoIs there any reason someone couldn't just make a nonprofit credit bureau today?