Reform IV. End the Credit Score Racket.

Credit scores. You hear ads about them all the time, how YOU are supposed to check yours and fix the errors. And Identity Theft. YOU are supposed to check for this and fix the confusion and harm it can cause you. And the financial industry tries very hard to sell you identity theft insurance. They cause pain by spreading lies and you are supposed to buy insurance from them. That's a protection racket.

Banks, landlords and all sorts of companies use this information to make decisions about YOU. Does the credit score company ask you for permission to collect this data? Nope. From where do they collect the data? Anywhere and from anyone.

You have a dispute about a bill. Maybe you never even got the bill. The vendor calls and says pay up, or they'll report the matter to a credit score company. That will hurt you whenever you apply for credit or try to rent an apartment or for all sorts of things, even buying insurance for your car, house or life.

Isn't this reminiscent of a protection racket? Pay us or we'll cause you pain.

"Identity theft": a bank loses money in a scam. They try to force YOU to work to fix THEIR mistakes or they'll spread lies about YOU.

This whole industry and practice is a racket, one of many in the financial industry to loot and pillage from the public. They're like a mafia, seeking all kinds of ways to extort money and work from YOU, while giving you ... nothing.

Identity theft. Let's analyzes this "theft". Who loses money? The banks, etc. get scammed and lose money. And do they try to collect from the perp? Nope. Instead they post lies about YOU to their partners in crime, the credit score companies. Then YOU are forced to fix the errors, or THEY make it impossible for you to get a loan. Identity theft is the banks' problem. Let them fix the errors and try to apprehend the actual thief.

Credit Score Reforms.

1. Permission. No company should be permitted to keep a data collection about YOU unless YOU give them permission. Improve the existing law that requires them to give you a report IF you ask, to a requirement that they give it to you every year regardless of your asking or not. Why should you be forced to spend your time to get your data?

2. Limit on Power. Require that no bank or insurance company make having a credit score a condition to getting a loan or an insurance policy. Ditto for renting apartments, etc. They can make loans the old fashioned way: doing their own homework.

3. Defamation. Make credit score companies responsible for ANY harm that lies they post about you cause you; strict liability should apply, plus a fine for about $500 payable to YOU for your time used to notify them of their lies. Open them up to defamation lawsuits. Require them to check whatever they post about you and force the giver to bear the risk of giving false data. This makes THEM liable for any costs of "identity theft" and would put the costs further onto the banks, vendors, etc. that post the false information about YOU.

All this would level the field. The common man and woman would no longer be terrorized by credit score agencies and threat by debt collectors. Over time, banks would stop relying on these nameless data systems and learn about their local economies and people. Small banks would have an advantage; big banks would be put at a disadvantage.

That's good. Let's end the credit score protection racket.

Word of the Day

"Deracinate" - verb, transitive [$10] literary
Deracinate means 1. tear up by the roots; 2. obliterate, expurge.
Sentence: Financial "innovation" for the past two decades has been a disaster. It has created piratical beasts - from large carnivores and small parasites; they prey on the common man and woman and create huge risks to the economy, all for their own gains. Let's deracinate all these "reforms" and go back to the old ways of the mid 1980s. The system worked better then and was much fairer.