Quote Originally Posted by Zundfolge View Post
The problem isn't that credit reports are used in banking, the problem is that credit reports are now accessed by tons of people that really shouldn't have access to them. There's no reason that prospective employers, cell phone service providers, the cable company, and the myriad of other people that run your credit score every time you do business with them should be doing any of it.

Hell, we bought a car not long ago and told the dealer we would be paying them cash, not getting a loan and they STILL ran a fucking credit report on my wife and I.

We need a HIPA for credit. We also need a means of changing our Social Security numbers should they be compromised. By the way this is why we should NEVER use biometric IDs.
That's not the point. The point is if banking were different, there would be no credit reports. Your reputation in the community would be your "credit report" instead of your credit report forming your lending-community reputation.

Essentially, credit reports are a violation of subsidiarity and even a man's good name, because they do not provide a proper picture of a person. There are people with great "credit" who shouldn't be given one of the bank's lollipops, much less a loan. And there are people who don't look good on paper and yet they represent no actual risk. These sorts of things are unknowable in the modern banking context.