That was fast. Here come the Chinese-like social credit scores.
Leftist Democrats, but I repeat myself, are making no secret of their plans to become more like their comrades in China. They support vaccine passports for COVID mRNA shots in order for people to receive certain social rewards such as going to school or attending a Major League Baseball game, just like the social credit score system in the People’s Republic. Now, Democrats and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, want your FICO score to go full “woke.”
They’re not even trying to hide it.
USA Today reports that in testimony before Waters’s committee on June 29, the counsel for a group called the National Consumer Law Center, Chi Chi Wu, a product of Harvard and Johns Hopkins, gave away the game on how her law-fare grifting group and people like them want to change FICO credit scores. Wu and her fellow travelers got a warm reception at the three-hour-plus hearing.
Wu wants the government to take over the credit scoring “now,” which in her magical utopia would include response “to public pressure” without putting “profit-making as their top priority.”
While public agencies are not perfect, at least they would not have profit-making as their top priority. They would be responsive to public pressure and government oversight. They could also be charged with developing credit scoring models to reduce the yawning racial and economic inequality in this country.
The fact that these are private, profit-seeking companies explains why the credit bureaus are constantly expanding their products into uses, such as employment, insurance, and tenant screening, that ultimately harm Americans and contribute to the massive inequality in our nation. [emphasis added]
USA Today reports that Wu claimed changing the way scores are figured “would be a major upgrade over today’s broken, biased credit reporting system.” Indeed, there are worthy reasons to change some aspects of the credit scoring system. For example, a person had credit trouble because he was incorrectly put on the terrorist watch list. She prefers allowing people to go to court to fix disputed credit reports.
Waters’ objective is to make credit scores less racist.
Good credit is a gateway to wealth. Yet, for far too long, our credit reporting system has kept people of color and low-income persons from access to capital to start a small business; access to mortgage loans to become homeowners; and access to credit to meet financial emergencies.
Waters announced that a bill sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D., The Squad, and passed out of the committee in 2019, the Comprehensive Credit Act, now will be reconsidered.
The objective is to make credit scores more easily attainable by racial minorities. Pressley noted that between “2008 to 2009 approximately 50 million people experienced a 20-point drop in their credit scores and about 21 million saw their scores decline by more than 50 points.” Of course, that was the housing market meltdown, started by Democrats wanting people who couldn’t afford houses to “qualify” for mortgages. Practically everyone took a credit score hit. But Pressley and The Squad appear to believe that this is proof of racism.
Related: Liberal Author Naomi Wolf Warns ‘Vaccine Passports’ Are the ‘End of Human Liberty in the West’
Indeed, banks have gotten the message that “Auntie Maxine,” who threatened the socialist take-over of the oil industry back in 2009, wants to change things up, and holding one of the most powerful House committee chairmanships gives her plenty of power to wield.
The Wall Street Journal reported in May that banks are planning to “issue credit cards to people with no credit scores” as part of a government program.
Supporters of the government takeover of FICO scores also want student loans, medical bills, pandemic-related expenses, and other items to be exempted from credit scoring. Wu wants student loans forgiven entirely. Of course, the government runs that program, too, so that should work out well.
There is discrimination in rewarding higher credit scores in this imperfect system. FICO credit scores discriminate against people who don’t pay their bills on time, have large and unpaid balances, bounce lots of checks, and sign up for every cockamamie credit card ruse dropped into their inboxes.
Related:‘Enough!’– Republicans Warn of ‘Creeping Fascism’ If We Don’t ‘Resist’ the Vaccine Passport
If Waters, Wu, and their Leftist friends have their way, soon those credit scores will be run by the federal government and rebalanced to include, as Wu desires, anti-racist activities as they define it, and “responsive to public pressure.”
Do as we say or your access to credit gets it.
If you don’t think this could happen, read my piece on how the government-run Chinese social credit score works and ask yourself if this isn’t exactly what would happen.
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