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Ezra is obviously just pimping content from his new corporate overlords here, but today’s Washington Post chat about the credit card industry really does make for interesting reading.  One of the things that comes through loud and clear is that people are almost universally paranoid about their credit scores.  And why not?  We live in a modern economy in which credit is essential, but your access to credit is determined by a process that’s deliberately opaque, practically impossible to dispute, controlled almost entirely by credit issuers who make money when they lure you into practices that wreck your credit score, and wide open to fraud because the credit industry doesn’t really care about it.

My solution?  For starters, credit scoring companies should be required by law to be far more transparent about their practices.  Beyond that, though, we need to give them an incentive to start caring about fraud: if the credit industry wrecks your credit score by allowing fraud, it’s the credit industry that should pay the price, not you.  More here.

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