Live data from Hacker News

Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

vox.com

81–90 of 205 posts

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#81
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

No, 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 Spoiler: both liberal and conservative groups were subject to extra scrutiny via keyword triggers, but only conservat…

> 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.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#82
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, 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 ope…

demographic I don't think it's a good idea to go back to the bad old days before credit reporting where whether you could get a loan or not was based on your demographics (color of your skin) rather than on the objective criterion in a credit report.

Your home address, age and marital status are absolutely used by lenders in a data-driven analysis of whether you are a creditworthy borrower. I don't think that's a necessarily malevolent analysis, but it's also not true that we live in a society where your demographics are irrelevant to your ability to access credit.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#83
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS has done this exact thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

"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…

James Comey who will be soon going to prison.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#84
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

demographic I don't think it's a good idea to go back to the bad old days before credit reporting where whether you could get a loan or not was based on your demographics (color of your skin) rather than on the objective criterion in a credit report.

Your home address, age and marital status are absolutely used by lenders in a data-driven analysis of whether you are a creditworthy borrower. I don't think that's a necessarily malevolent analysis, but it's also not true that we live in a society where your demographics are irrelevant to your ability to access credit.

Your home address, age and marital status are absolutely used by lenders

Oh I know. The world isn't perfect in this respect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be thanks to credit reporting. It has been an incredibly powerful tool for social justice. Outlawing it as a tool would be a very large step backwards.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a progressive liberal, but I believe this is hogwash. Many countries have a government issued national card for citizens. It's not a huge deal. Activists have made it seem like it's a way to suppress voters but I think that's largely BS. We could start a campaign now, or just after the next election in 2020, and get people to sign up for cards by 2028, and enforce that then. We have census every 10 years, it's so…

>I'm a progressive liberal, but I believe this is hogwash. Many countries have a government issued national card for citizens. It's not a huge deal. Activists have made it seem like it's a way to suppress voters but I think that's largely BS. Have you tried educating yourself on the matter? For "some" reason, there are large swaths of land where people have to travel 25+ miles and pay with their already taxed income…

Your comment could be much better if you could please remove the ad hominem and tone down the snark.

Particularly on a political thread.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#86
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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.

No, 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 Spoiler: both liberal and conservative groups were subject to extra scrutiny via keyword triggers, but only conservat…

So totally non-political?

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#87
I 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.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#88
post #12

Awful 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 to…

But would just the 3 US credit report companies would go bankrupt if the judicial system was doing its job ? I agree that the government should not rate credit worthiness. But we need a trusted third party that tracks your credit history (just the data of what/when you got credits, and missed payments). Something that the banks and loan shop could consult and compute their own risk assessment. In some European countr…

Blockchain would probably work.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#89
Re: "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.

Re: Sanders wants to replace credit reporting companies with public credit registry

#90

Awful 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 to…

Credit reporting agencies don’t give a “rating”. They keep a record of whether or not you pay debts in a timely manner or not.

The fair Isaac corporation issue the FICO score and each credit bureau has their own competing score. The Equifax one is call the "Equifax Credit Score"
Post reply on HN