Which neatly highlights the difference between knowing something and Knowing something.
When I’m writing an essay I can’t assert something then just reference it with “some dude said”. AOC has just provided the gold-plated footnote-reference for all future essays and articles on credit scores and the fraudulent companies that generate them.
The whole credit rating thing is silly and also subject to being gamed. To rebuild my credit rating, my bank had me take out a “credit builder” loan. They loaned me I think like $3,000, all of which was deposited into a money market account from which payments against the loan were automatically drawn each month. This was all done at no interest. It successfully raised my credit rating at no cost or risk to me. Please justify how this is at all productive for the economy?
I’ve said it before and it bears repeating: she is simply making these things discussable - moving the Overton window, and if that is ALL she achieves it will be worth it.
I hope she gets some momentum for action at some point, but it is early days, and just starting open, public discussion - that others can join in with or take up and run with - of some previously ‘taboo’ topics is big progress.
EDITED TO ADD, A DAY LATER:
Quoting AOC from this this post/article:
A huge part of my agenda is to move the Overton window, because it’s a strategic position.
You’re the worst kind of person.
the kind of person who refuses to play their rigged game…
(not my opinion, theirs.)
I love this woman and how she cuts completely through bullshit like that sword from Alita Battle Angel, just cuts away bullshit at the molecular level
Why the hell people can’t ask direct pointed questions of a simple brief and obvious nature in Congress utterly stuns me
Their ability to do so would have to be predicated on their intention to actually serve their constituents, and not the people with enough money to get them re-elected.
Well, people were paid for arranging this scheme. People were paid for managing the scheme. Other people got to say that the money they were in charge of investing was duly being invested and got paid for that. A whole bunch of electricity was used. Ditto various bits of electronic equipment and data lines. Presumably other people were paid to look after all this equipment, clean up after the other people, etc. All of these people bought food and clothes and paid for housing and transportation and generally behaved like good little consumer units.
None of which is productive in any real sense but then what is in a modern economy?
You, after engaging in the appropriate ritual, were in due course declared sanctified by the priests and released from your period of ritual shunning, having properly signaled your contrition and performed your act of penance - once again able to take part in the ordinary rituals of our society such as taking out a mortgage, paying for goods with a credit card, etc.
The comparison with performing some ritual in order to be absolved from some sin/infraction is not exact but I’d say there’s more of that to it than there is any rational point.
When closing an account, give a permanent address. A relative or friend to receive the final statement to confirm there has been no human, electronic error or fraudulent activity. It a good practice. I had someone key a social security number incorrectly on
one of my accounts. I caught it quickly while routinely reviewing my bank accounts. It was easily resolved by bank even though I had moved to another state. You apparently have really bad luck. I things get better for you.
Possibly reasonable if you have a permanent address and get the chance to do so. I didn’t even get a chance once because the bank closed my account without my knowledge and without even telling me.
Worse, they still accepted my paycheck being deposited into the account. It was only when I went to make a withdrawal that they discovered that the account no longer existed, so my money wasn’t there, and they’d have to initiate a lengthy investigation to determine what happened to it. (Got my money back a month later, but that was a difficult month.)
I wonder how that bank’s shenanigans affected my credit record.
It’s good advice, definitely. When the bank incident happened to me, I was a college student who was moving every three months (my university required quarterly internships) so a permanent address wasn’t really plausible.
But I think you’re getting unnecessarily concerned with my college-era banking practices rather than the bigger issue of this thread and what AOC is aiming at: that small, dumb errors that could happen to anybody are being constantly monitored and cataloged by three massive private for-profit agencies, whom I never gave permission to handle or view my financial data, and who get to decide based on those little errors whether I should be trusted to buy a house or car or have a job. And meanwhile those same companies are so sloppy with our private info that they’ve had the largest data breaches in history. That’s what concerns me, not proper home address management.
Credit rating agencies that were not-for-profit, transparent, and highly accountable to democratically elected/appointed regulators would encourage more personal responsibility for consumers who chose to participate in the system. This would be even more true under the principle that an individual’s data belongs first and foremost to said individual (see also medical data, social media data, etc.), to be released or shared only under their terms.
Of course, these parameters are all anathema to the so-called “party of personal responsibility” and others who regularly whinge about the lack of it. Corporate profits and “free” market dogma and virtue-signalling are ultimately more important to them.
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