Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Check your holiday credit card bills closely. Some credit card companies are raising interest rates on good customers even if they pay down their balances, on time, every month. The reason they cite is that the customer's credit rating has fallen elsewhere. That was a rude surprise to Janet Hard, a stay-at-home mother of two teenage boys from Freeland, Mich. Depending on her husband's salary as a steamfitter while she raised the children was financially difficult, Hard said. To keep the family's finances in balance, Hard said she paid more than the minimum payment on her Discover card...

A day after the White House unveiled a program to salvage the mortgage market, people are already talking about how borrowers might game the system. To qualify for the fast-track program, borrowers must have a FICO score of less than 660 and it can't have increased by more than 10% since they took out their original subprime mortgage. Because income isn't checked, some experts worry that borrowers who might otherwise be able to afford higher payments will try to lower their FICO score to qualify for a rate freeze. "The message here is to get your FICO score down," Mark...

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators said Friday they are reviewing the role credit-rating agencies played in the mortgage market debacle for borrowers with weak credit. The Securities and Exchange Commission “has begun a review of credit rating agency policies and procedures,” SEC spokesman John Nester said Friday. That review, he said, will include what ratings mean and whether conflicts of interest were created if rating agencies gave advice to issuers of mortgage debt and originators.

Only a low credit score stood between Alipio Estruch and a mortgage to buy a $449,000 Spanish-style house in Weston, Fla., a few miles west of Fort Lauderdale. Instead of spending several years repairing his credit rating, which he said was marred by two forgotten cell phone bills and identity theft, the 37-year-old real estate agent paid $1,800 to an Internet-based company to bump up his score almost overnight. The result was a happy ending for Estruch, but the growing practice is sending shivers through the mortgage industry. Federal regulators are also reviewing the practice. And after being contacted by...