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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."
The point where your oligarchs completely stop pretending you have any democratic say in your country.
As opposed to the private credit rating agencies that have all your personal credit information with zero transparency and accountability?
I'd rather this be in the public sphere where hopefully the agency has my interests at heart, rather than some private, for profit corporation.
Of course I live in Soviet-Canuckastan, so my opinion may differ from my "freedom loving free marketer loving" cousins to the south...
Mortgages are public records. State and local governments already have all that data. Anyone can look it up. Data companies have already collected it for most parts of the US and use it for marketing.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is only going to have a 1 in 20 sample of the data. That's enough to look for improper activity by lenders. There's a lot of funny stuff going on in the foreclosure area, but nobody has been analysing that as a "big data" problem.
Congratulations, you're pre-approved for a mortgage at a special low rate!!!
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.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Look at what data CoreLogic has access to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
CoreLogic, Inc. is a North American corporation providing financial, property and consumer information, analytics and business intelligence. Headquartered in Irvine, CA, the company analyzes information assets and data to provide clients with analytics and customized data services. Data sources include property and mortgage information, motor vehicle records, criminal background records and tax records.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Despite being prohibited by Congress, the federal government is still assembling the components separately.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Full Disclosure: Worked at one of the money center banks in both Small Business and Credit Cards for six years and a foreign bank with a US presence for 4.
What is this thing and do I need to get my foil hat?
The database they are constructing is being used to conduct performance reviews on originated mortgages. The database won't pick you up unless you start a mortgage. Once you originate the mortgage this database is being put into place in order to monitor your performance on that mortgage and your corresponding financial condition.
Why are they doing this?
To stop the next credit crisis as the system would allow surveillance over mortgages originated by banking institutions. Today, banking regulators have broad powers to request information out of banks including everything that's going to be held in this database (personal information about you, you bet - your bank is pulling regular credit reports on you and the regulator can check your progress when they come in for an exam. Building the database would shortcut that request and help get a better view as to how institutions are originating. No longer would regulators have to show up and start poking around at a bank, but they could monitor the health of the banks portfolio.
Who would be against this? This sounds like a way to crack down on banks.
It is a way to crack down on banks and ensure that what's being originated isn't crap. Think about it. We could have better monitored the health of the entire mortgage system by have having this database in place. Those who are against this are most likely those who have a vested interest in ensuring that the mortgage industry opaque to regulators. Those concerned about privacy should realize all of this data is being collected today, I can pull your credit report and cross it with data from CoreLogic and do roughly the same thing. Yes it is all in one place and with a government entity, but so long as its being used responsibility I don't have a problem with it as it would create an excellent tool for finding bad actors within the mortgage industry.
It's so very sad that most Americans have never READ the Constitution. They're all so very certain the things they WANT are "constitutional" and the things they don't want others doing are "unconstitutional" but most are clueless because they've never even bothered to READ it. This nation would not be in so many of the messes it's in right now if we had simply folowed the document. It's not like reading it would take any real effort; it's written in English, and unlike "War and Peace" or "Atlas Shrugged" the founders wrote it on FOUR (big) pages.
For those too lazy to look it up... the ninth ought to make LIMITED federal government very clear even before you get to the 10th:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The entire POINT of the Constitution was to create a small VERY LIMITED federal government with specific limited powers and responsibilities and leave the rest to the states and the people. It says this over and over again and re-states it in the 9th and 10th Amendments within the Bill of Rights. This is contrary to the desires of most politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, investment bankers etc so they've packed the government, including the courts, with people who don't give a damn about their oaths or the Constitution and who will legislate and rule in whatever way benefits them.
It was about slavery because the Southern states have admitted as much. They authored and published those documents, "declarations of secession", which outlined the reasons why they wanted to secede. Every single one of them features slavery prominently; in most, it is the main point.
Besides which, the smoking gun is in the constitution of the CSA. The changes that it has relative to the original USA constitution, again, feature slavery prominently - requiring federal recognition and enforcement of it , and barring any new states from not recognizing slavery.
For the North, the war was not entirely over slavery. For the South, that was the sole reason for it. Those are the facts.
Gotta love the liberal revisionist history. If the civil war was only about slavery:
1) Why were there Union states that still allowed slavery?
2) Why did it take Lincoln two years AFTER the war started to deliver the emancipation proclamation?
3) Why were there Union states that still did not abolish slavery AFTER the emancipation proclamation and even AFTER the Civil War?
The answer is simple. Lincoln was willing to tolerate the status quo of slavery to preserve the Union. However, he was determined to prevent slavery from being established in the new territories. The South decided that wasn't good enough and decided to secede. The emancipation proclamation was meant to punish and undermine the states in rebellion.
You can argue that the war was also about the right of secession, but the issue of slavery was the cause for the split, and of that there is no doubt.