Sunshine

December 22, 2013 | By Greg Fisher

The email messages below were attached to a June 27 message to the New York Times.

From: Greg Fisher (greg@creditscoring.com)
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 12:47 PM
To: Miles Rapoport, president, Demos
Cc: Robert Hiltonsmith, policy analyst, Demos; David Callahan, expert, Demos; Charles Halpern, founding board chairman emeritus, Demos; Amy Traub, senior policy analyst, Demos; Greg Brock, senior editor, Standards, New York Times; Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher, New York Times; Onieka O’Keefe, member, Retail Action Project (via Y. Walton); Gerould W. Kern, senior vice-president and editor, Chicago Tribune; Howard Marks, billionaire; Chi Chi Wu, expert, consumer credit issues ranging from credit cards to medical debt to fair credit reporting, & staff attorney, National Consumer Law Center; U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission newsroom; Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president - executive editor, Associated Press (3); Eileen AJ Connelly, Associated Press; Gary Pruitt, president & CEO, Associated Press (via P. Colford); Mary Junck, chairman, Associated Press; Benjamin M. Lawsky, superintendent, Department of Financial Services, State of New York; Andrew Cuomo, governor, State of New York; James A. Guest, president, CEO, consumer Reports, Consumers Union; James A. Guest, president, CEO, consumer Reports, Consumers Union (press address); Cathy Osten, state Senator, chair, Labor & Public Employees, Connecticut; Edith Prague, former state Senator, former chair, Labor & Public Employees, Connecticut (CGA address); Edith Prague, former state Senator, former chair, Labor & Public Employees, Connecticut (senatedems.ct.gov address); Edith Prague, former state Senator, former chair, Labor & Public Employees, Connecticut (COA address)
Subject: The Charter Oak

Connecticut’s sunshine law allows citizens [to] find out what happens on their behalf. A state transcript indicates that your organization’s representative testified (indeed, with detail of an alleged mechanism of distribution): “And it really just depends on the method through which the employer gets their credit scores. A lot of times they come bundled with background checks, for example, and that’s part of the reason for the proliferation.”

That is not true.

In November, you claimed: “Prior to the recession, on average, just 15 percent of the 170 million consumers with active credit accounts, or 25.5 million people, had poor credit, defined as FICO scores below 600 out of a possible 850. As of April 2010, one-quarter of U.S. consumers, nearly 43.4 million people, had poor credit.[3]”

The footnote refers to an omnipresent, oft-cited but inaccurate report by the Associated Press.

In a New York Times editorial whose first word is “Research,” the sole hyperlink leads to your report, “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out Of A Job.”

In it, you misquote a citizen. Your text reads, “… my credit shouldn’t determine whether or not I’m a good worker.”

She actually said, “… my credit score shouldn’t determine whether or not I’m a good worker.”

In April, the New York Superintendent of Financial Services said, “This issue is critically important because a person’s credit score can impact everything from the rate they pay for a mortgage to their prospects for getting a new job.”

He made that statement in a press conference with the governor, and a representative from the magazine Consumer Reports. In its latest edition, among dishwashers, car batteries, and an egg-yolk extractor, the publisher’s president comments: “The score that lenders really use may factor into your chances of getting a car loan, a mortgage, or a job, and into what you’ll pay in interest, as a deposit for rent and utilities, and, in many states, for insurance.”

Employers do not use credit scores; the use of credit scores by employers is a myth.

The point is that, fueled by an ever-increasing number of documents supposedly meant to help citizens but containing inaccurate information, urban legends may never end. If reports which actually reveal reality achieve critical mass, the truth may still have a chance, but I am not heartened by evidence of its prospects. Five years of misinformation must be dislodged. And, this is not just about employers and credit scores, the consumer reporting system, personal finance, consumer issues nor, even, American life. This is about truth, an implosion of understanding due to viral misinformation and fact versus false belief. The outcome has serious consequences.

Now, you claim, “Credit scores —another product used by lenders which consists of a single number calculated on the basis of information in a credit report—are not typically provided to employers.”

What do you mean by “typically”? Weasel words like that and “generally” lead to nonsense in the marketplace of ideas.

Will you append your statement in Connecticut, for the record?

Or, if you stand by your statements, then 1) you must know of one employer who uses credit scores, and if that is the case, then name that employer, or 2) you heard it from some guy, and if that is the case, then name him. I’ll take it up with one or the other.

Finally, you claim, inaccurately, that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is Senate Majority Leader.

I will not allow you to change American history. Reply today.

--
Greg Fisher
The Credit Scoring Site
creditscoring.com
Page A2
pagea2.com
PO Box 342
Dayton, Ohio 45409-0342

The following email messages were attached.

From: Greg Fisher
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 8:33 AM
To: Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher, New York Times
Subject: credit score, distribution, New York Times

See this message and your response at http://blog.creditscoring.com/?p=4723.

In an editorial, you published, “But the proportion of people with poor ratings — credit scores under 600 — has grown from about 15 percent in the years before the recession to about 25 percent in 2011.”

According to Fair Isaac, in its FICO 8 credit score model, from 2005 to 2011, the percentage of those under 600 was never lower than 23.

What is the name of the person who wrote that editorial?