Posted on 04/19/2013 12:15:19 AM PDT by floridavoter2
Despite objections from banks across the United States, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to monitor how millions of Americans apply for mortgages, use credit cards, and overdraw their checking accounts. To further this mission, the consumer finance watchdog is requiring banks to submit their records. It has even bought anonymous information about at least 10 million consumers from credit-monitoring companies, including Experian, which was paid $8.4 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at wallstcheatsheet.com ...
I have not had an American bank account in ten years.
Praise be to God.
Aren’t you the one who lives in the Phillipines? What time is it there?
I don’t think the government has any business doing this but, beyond that it makes sense. Firstly, it’s not “reams and reams” of information but, computerized transaction records that the banks and other institutions are - justifiably - pissed at having to waste a ton of money and manpower to strip of personal information.
If I were working on a national level, 10 million customers (the width of the dive) wouldn’t strike me as anything other than reasonable. It’s the time period (the depth of the dive) where you could see serious problems: 2 years, fine. 10 years, problem.
“Arent you the one who lives in the Phillipines? What time is it there?”
__________________________________________
3:40 PM
From the article:
[....Together with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the consumer bureau [re:Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] is also creating a large database that will integrate consumer credit information with loan and property records....]
With all this ‘integrating’ on such a massive scale, it seems hard to believe they won’t be able to pinpoint who is who, if they really want to find where you spend your money, who you are, what you own, etc. It just seems very fishy to me...
Here’s what is happening (at least over the last decade). A guy gets up into making real money, for consulting work. He eventually moves his operation to the islands and begins to tell the clients that the bill will come and they will merely pay to his credit card account, which happens to be in the Cayman Islands or Bahamas. $500 here, $2000 there....pretty soon, it all adds up. No taxation. The consultant flies into the US and quietly does two weeks of real work a month, and then retreats.
The government knows of thousands of such operations but can’t get their hands onto the players....unless you start to look at banking records and charge accounts.
“clients that the bill will come and they will merely pay to his credit card account, which happens to be in the Cayman Islands or Bahamas.”
By law, you can’t maintain a positive balance on your credit card. I ended up with $3 too much and Visa sent me a check in the mail. When I called and asked that’s what they told me.
My uncle used to do all his off-books work by depositing cash in his credit card account. He’d maintain thousands, but this was 30 + years ago. I think the IRS caught on.
Moral: Pay cash or use money orders.
Some years ago I had accounts at Wells Fargo along with a credit card. I got mad at them and closed out all the accounts and paid off the $2k balance on the credit card. They screwed up the pay off for the cc and double credited it which gave me a $2k credit on it. Within days I got a call from their fraud department wanting to know why I had a $2k credit. I told them they were idiots and hung up on them. I guess eventually they figured it out since I never heard from them again.
It’s surprisingly difficult to have any data-confidence in tables joined without a reliable unique identifier. In situations like this, you want the Social Security number and it sounds like it’s being stripped along with the names.
That’s not to say they won’t be able to piece together a lot....they will. But the reliability is going to be very low.
Not that petty facts like that would prevent this administration from relying on it, if for no reason other than propaganda purposes
OK. But most people now have a 'card' which can be used for 'credit' purchases or 'debit' purchases. You have to have a positive balance to use the card for a 'debit' purchase.
It is not the government,it is a shadow agency that is independent,it answers to no one,it gets any money it requests without going through the regular appropriations process,we want this amount of money and they get it period
There is no recourse to their edicts
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.