New Federal Database Will Track Americans' Credit Ratings, Other Financial Info

schwit1 (797399) writes "As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives — including their Social Security numbers — in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program to include personally identifiable information that reveals actual users, a reversal of previously stated policy. The FHFA will manage the database and share it with CFPB. A CFPB internal planning document for 2013-17 describes the bureau as monitoring 95 percent of all mortgage transactions. FHFA officials claim the database is essential to conducting a monthly mortgage survey required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and to help it prepare an annual report for Congress."

Re:Credit rating databases aren't new

[bmo]

As opposed to the private credit rating agencies that have all your personal credit information with zero transparency and accountability?

Remember the ol' "OH NOES DEATH PANELS" panic and propaganda that Fox, the Tea Pottyers, and Sarah Palin were trying to sow? I found it hilarious, considering I had HMO coverage through United Health at the time.

Even a 1% public interest (what this is) is better than the anti-public-interest we have right now.

Soviet-Canuckistan

We demand the freedom to be fucked by corporate interests! I demand to pay twice as much as Canadians do and get worse healthcare!

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BMO

Re:Credit rating databases aren't new

[Anonymous Coward]

remember the little girl who needed an organ transplant? she was told no and they actually had to bring it to court to save this girls life

now all the news about secret waiting lists at the VA deciding who has to wait months and months for treatment could be called death panels

Oh yeah, and private insurers never denied coverage to anyone, acting as "death panels" in your terminology. Nope.

It's more than mortgages.

[TigerPlish]

According to TFA:

Late car payment? It'll be recorded.

Late creditcard payment? Skipped a child support payment? Forgot to pay the water bill? It'll be recorded. Or so TFA says.

The database will also encompass a mortgage holderâ(TM)s entire credit history, including delinquent payments, late payments, minimum payments, high account balances and credit scores, according to the notice.

Really?! "high account balances?!"

The composition of your family? Feast your eyes on this little nugget FTFA:

The two agencies will also assemble âoehousehold demographic data,â including racial and ethnic data, gender, marital status, religion, education, employment history, military status, household composition, the number of wage earners and a familyâ(TM)s total wealth and assets.

Folks.. it *is* big brother. People are focusing on only the mortgage aspect, but if TFA is to be believed, it's a financial dragnet.

What the fuck are they looking for? People spending large sums on strange things?

It won't be for bureaucratic purposes. This will get tied in with law enforcement somehow. That's just my gut feeling, folks... but I do really think LEOs will want in on this.

"Mr Smith, we'd like to have a word with you.. every two weeks you withdraw $100 cash, then as you can see in these pictures, the city's automated license plate readers catch you visiting the address of a known marijuana dealer every time you make that withdrawal. Please step into the van, sir."

It's coming. Maybe not for a bag of sweet leaf, but surely for other things.

2001 was the year the US ended. We sold out to the Gov't and did so willingly; because Terrorism!, because Think of the Children, because War on Drugs! But mainly because Terrorism.

To hell with the federal government, might as well call it the Reich now.

Re:Credit rating databases aren't new

[Anonymous Coward]

I demand to pay twice as much as Canadians do and get worse healthcare!

--
BMO

Honestly Canada's health care reputation is based on its performance in the 80's and early 90's its pretty shit right now especially if your not in Ontario

Remember Total Information Awareness

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite being prohibited by Congress, the federal government is still assembling the components separately.

Parts of Left and Right will be against this

[davidwr]

I expect the Tea Party and libertarian-leaning Democrats to be up in arms about this.

I expect "business Republicans" and non-libertarian Democrats to see this as A Good Thing or at least a "neutral thing, but serving a good purpose" thing.

Let the sparks fly.

Re:It's more than mortgages.

[TigerPlish]

One thing is to have financial information about individuals and their families scattered across multiple entities with defined boundaries and different search mechanisms -- it's another thing entirely to have the same financial info in one nice, convenient, easy-to-search, easy-to-abuse place.

A convenient central financial info database with intimate detail. What could *possibly* go wrong, right?

Now that I've had some time to chew on the news and my post, it occurs to me that this is also a profiling tool. Perhaps predictive uses could also be found for it?

The ranting will continue, by the way, by myself and others, until either we're dead, or a dramatic change of course happens to this country. And yes, I remember the ranting 30 years ago. Vividly. Along with images of Carter and Shah, Reagan and Ayatollah, Bush and Noriega, Bush II and Saddam, Obama and bin-Laden, brought to us by talking heads and punctuated by the nodding of a million muggles' heads.

No one. Fucking. Listened. Now we're playing the same songbook again, only the music is much more sinister, faster and more intense.

Wake the fuck up, people.

Re:the Putin stage

[TapeCutter]

Sigh, someone says to you stop paying off someone else's mortgage, I will lend you 500K but don't worry about the payments because the housing market is booming and the capital gains you make will pay off the loan for you. People with little financial knowledge who had never made such a large and complicated purchase were scammed by lenders who knew exactly what they were doing - increasing their commision revenue by not giving a flying fuck about the mess they left behind. This is why the banks stopped trusting each other and the whole thing came to sudden halt. In the financial world it's ok to rip off joe home buyer but it's not ok to try and palm off the problem to another bank.

Lax regulation allowed greed to take its natural course, it's like expecting a mugger not to mug you because you disbanded the police force. When the artificial housing bubble inevitably popped everybody lost out including the banks and the people who already owned their home outright (on the other side of the planet!!!). Greenspan was warned time and again this would happen, and when it did it damned near threw the world into another great depression. For every major fuck up there's always an ideologue somewhere at the bottom of it, the GFC is Greenspan's "legacy", not the fantasy of a libertarian paradise he had hoped for where everyone treats everyone else fairly when the government "gets out of the way".

Re:the Putin stage

[TapeCutter]

1. There is no such thing as a free market.

The majority of American simply do not understand the term "free market" they believe that the "free" means free from regulation, yet nothing could be further from the truth. An economic market is not a "thing" it's a set of rules governing trade (eg:property law), a "set of rules" that's "free from regulation" is an oxymoron. "Free" actually refers to membership, in that everyone is free to participate in the market, provided they play by the rules. Some example of non-free markets - the international arms trade, nuclear fuel and waste industries, OPEC, etc.

Point 2 does not follow since point 1 uses the Fox News definition of "free market".