Bernie Sanders wants to replace private credit reporting firms with free, public registry

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Sen. Sanders, I-Vt., polling in third place for the Democratic presidential nomination, says the public credit registry would be housed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created in 2011 to protect Americans from predatory lenders in the wake of the financial crisis. According to Sanders’ campaign, the new system would use a “transparent algorithm to determine creditworthiness that eliminates racial biases in credit scores” and allows Americans to access their credit scores for free. Medical debts would be excluded from people’s reports.

(snip)

Critics of the current system point to how Equifax’s insufficient data security practices allowed it to suffer a massive hack in 2017 that led to more than 140 million Americans having their personal information exposed and to studies that show people’s credit reports, which can determine if they’re hired for a job or how much they’ll pay for a car, are riddled with errors.

“Credit reporting companies don’t have a financial incentive to improve accuracy,” said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at the liberal-leaning policy group Demos, which has advocated for a public credit registry. Sanders’ version, she said, “would serve consumers as its central mission, and would have a mandate to invest in accurate data.”

(snip)

Half of white people say they’re “very confident” they’d be approved for credit, while just 20% of black Americans feel the same. Meanwhile, around 7% of white people with poor credit scores say there are errors on their report, compared with 40% of African Americans.

(snip)


https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/25/bernie-sanders-wants-to-overhaul-the-countrys-credit-reporting-system.html

[left-of-center2012]

1. I've lost track of all Bernie wants to toss out

[Uncle Joe]

2. The nation's critical needs when taken as a whole can be overwhelming to some.

[George II]

27. Why did you post a photograph of a mansion in Detroit that was demolished back in 2007 12 years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Livingstone_House

[Uncle Joe]

30. I posted the picture of a dilapidated house in need of serious renovation.

That's all that mattered to get my point across to anyone not being purposely obtuse.

Here are a few more if it makes you feel better.








I don't believe all of them are in Detroit or have been demolished.

[George II]

31. So, getting back to my question in a thread about a national credit registry....

....what is the relevance of a mansion that was demolished in 2007?

[Uncle Joe]

32. To understand that you would only have to read the post #1 that I was responding too. n/t

[HeartlandProgressive]

39. it was being used as a visual metaphor

as images and gifs often are on the interweb... ask a young person to explain it.

[vsrazdem]

4. Gees, Just because Bernie said it, doesn't mean its bad.

[ehrnst]

7. Actually, DEMOS came up with the idea. Bernie is presenting it as one of his policy proposals

Here's a link that's in the article at the link in the OP.

https://www.demos.org/policy-briefs/establish-public-credit-registry

[vsrazdem]

9. I didn't say he came up with the idea. I said just because he said it, doesn't mean its bad.

[ehrnst]

11. Sorry to have caused such offense.

[vsrazdem]

14. No offense, I just get tired of people jumping in, attacking Bernie every time he opens his mouth.

[NurseJackie]

21. Nobody is attacking him.

[vsrazdem]

24. LOL

[left-of-center2012]

23. No one said Bernie is bad

Where'd that come from?

[HerbChestnut]

20. This is a good thing to toss out.

Keeping people's credit scores behind a paywall is insane.

(Yes, I know there are ways to get a free credit report from time to time. The point is they should be freely available at ALL times.)

[BlueMississippi]

35. They are freely available any time

from creditkarma.com and creditsesame.com

[ehrnst]

3. Here's a link to the April 2019 original policy brief and transition report on this by DEMOS

Since the link didn't make it into your snips:

Demos proposes establishing a public credit registry housed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This publicly run credit registry will gradually replace the current for-profit corporate system, and is designed to be responsive to consumer needs and equity concerns rather than the corporate bottom line. A public credit registry will develop algorithms that diminish the impact of past discrimination, deliver transparent credit scoring, provide greater data security and offer a publicly accountable way to resolve disputes. The use of credit information for non-lending purposes, such as employment, housing, and insurance, will be curtailed.

https://www.demos.org/policy-briefs/establish-public-credit-registry

See our full report for more on the transition to a public credit registry, tips on how to talk about the public credit registry, and links to further resources.

Bernie's staff did their homework on the talking points:

The messaging ideas in this section derive from best practices developed by
communications and messaging experts. General principles include:

• Start with an appeal to values and the vision of a better future.

• Include an up-front discussion of race and of the causes of racial disparities
in wealth, credit, and debt.

• Highlight credit and debt as systemic issues, rather than exclusively
personal failings.

• Emphasize the concrete, lived consequences of credit and debt disparities
for people (being denied a job, paying more every month for a car loan)
and the concretely better outcomes for people that would be a result of
good policy.

• Offer a clear villain, in this case unaccountable private credit reporting
companies.

https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/2019-03/Credit%20Report_Full.pdf

[Uncle Joe]

5. Thanks for the addition ehrnst.

[ehrnst]

6. You're welcome! Bernie's staff really took the part they wrote about talking points to heart.

A public credit registry will develop algorithms that diminish the impact of past discrimination, deliver transparent credit scoring, provide greater data security and offer a publicly accountable way to resolve disputes.

[George II]

13. So it's not BS' idea?

[ehrnst]

19. No, not really. But he approves, so apparently now it's his policy, and his idea. (nt)

[NurseJackie]

28. OMG! Why are you "attacking" Bernie? :eyes:

OMG! Why are you "attacking" Bernie?

[Uncle Joe]

22. Nothing in the article and no person on this thread has stated that it was "Bernie's idea" but

to my knowledge no other Presidential Candidate has supported this policy proposal.

[George II]

25. "Bernie Sanders wants...." With what's going on in the government and the world these days....

....this is a relatively minor thing. Probably the others have higher priorities to be campaigning for.

[Uncle Joe]

29. If you believe this is the only or even the most important issue that Bernie has been

campaigning for, you haven't been paying attention.

[George II]

8. Another "list"? He wants the Federal Government to have a list of everyone's financial information?

No thanks.

[Politicub]

12. Spoiler alert: The government already has a list...

via the IRS.

[George II]

15. They don't have my credit information.

[Politicub]

10. A public registry is a good idea.

I wouldn't go as far as making the credit reporting firms go out of business. But I would like to see a law that would make it illegal to rely solely on credit worthiness information from a commercial firm.

I would like to see the full force of the CFPB put back in effect. It's no wonder why the GOP wants the Supreme Court to make the law that spawned the CFPB null and void.

[ehrnst]

16. Restoring the CFPB to full authority would be the logical first step. Quick and effective.

But that would mean acknowledging the fact that a campaign rival put into place the most consequential consumer protection mechanism in modern times. Perhaps if she wasn't running, that would be part of it.

So there's that.

[brooklynite]

17. He wants the Government to decide what my credit-worthiness is?

Do you?

[Uncle Joe]

18. Due to mass psychological conditioning or brain washing from Republican/corporate T.V. programming

we as a nation have regressed light years from the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.

What was once "We the People" is now "government is the problem," at least on a subconscious level.

I don't have a problem with the government determining my creditworthiness so long as the algorithms are uniform and just.

[customerserviceguy]

26. How about

just getting rid of the incompetent criminals at Equifax? I'd settle for that. We're still left with a Tweedledum/Tweedledee set of credit bureaus.

[Joe941]

33. Another brilliant idea from bernie!

[George II]

36. Is there anything in his proposal about where the current employees of....

...Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, and Innovis are going to turn for work?

Experian - 17,000 employees
Equifax - 11,000 employees
TransUnion - 7,100 employees
Innovis - unknown

That's at least 34,000 plus thousands at Innovis.

[DrFunkenstein]

37. I'd bet they'd have good resumes for the government positions

Honestly, though, I'm tired of people saying that we are going to continue sticking it to the American people (the environment, etc.) so that a relative handful can keep their current jobs.

[George II]

38. In other words, if this passes, the person advocating for "working Americans"....

....is intending on disrupting the lives of more than 30,000 working Americans because they're only, in your words, a "relative handful"?