Monday, December 17, 2007

Casey's Wishlist: How to Disappear

Link is to Casey's amazon.com wish list. Highlights:

  • Bulletproof Privacy: How to Live Hidden, Happy and Free!
  • Hide Your Assets and Disappear: A Step-by-Step Guide to Vanishing Without a Trace
  • Acquiring New ID: How To Easily Use The Latest Technology To Drop Out, Start Over, And Get On With Your Life
  • New I.D. In America


Because I'm sure the banks have never thought of that.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Casey thinks a Job is Slavery

Nigel posts an email exchange with Casey. Beautiful stuff:

The slaves worked hard all day long and all they got was shelter and food. That's all the average person working an average job today is able to buy with their income. We're slaves to our jobs.

And then when we want a little something more than just shelter and food we have to go into debt. That puts us into an even deeper slavery.

The dollar is eroding away (inflation) at a much faster pace than our income is increasing and the rest of the money is taxed away.

Slavery.


I guess he missed the part where people working average jobs have air conditioning, plasma TVs, computers & the internet, cars, Starbucks & Jamba Juice, and Macaroni Grill.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Syndicatered: Credit "Repair" 101

Syndicatered is back online, and posts about the credit repair mechanisms he's mentioned before (paragraph breaks added):

So how exactly do you kick out one of these credit killers? Two techniques work, one is to kick out the legs of what made up the BK or Foreclosure, so say for instance you had 3 credit cards that were wiped off in your BK, these items are listed and reflected on your credit report as BK items. You dispute the 3 credit cards until you get them wiped off, its a matter of time and persistence and you can get pretty much anything knocked off, sometimes it just takes a little bit longer time. So if you get everything that made up the BK removed via the 30 day method, than how can the BK possibly stand if everything it represented cant be accounted for? Because they can't prove the validity of it anymore, they have to delete it whether you really had a BK or foreclosure or not, your just working the system and using your rights.

The second method is soo awesome, I love this, so when you get say a Foreclosure they lodge you in county records, depending on your city where you recieved the foreclosure or BK determines you may have a little bit different variation because of how your court system handles its paperwork. So your courthouse will either house your record in the court house in an offsite store place. There are only two people who are actually allowed access to your file, you and the clerk of courts. So lets say the credit bureau's want to verify that you have a file with them they call the clerk to access it. So how do you spin this?? You go and request your file and depending on where it is you may get it immediately or they have to send for it so it could be a day or two. When you have your file or the clerk of courts has your file waiting for you, the file is in limbo to other parties. So if the credit bureau goes to pull for your file, it comes up as file not found. The idea is to delay your file from being returned for as long as humanly possible, whatever bullshit you have to feed to keep your judgment from going back into the system.


The more he clarifies the method, the more shady it seems.

Is it ethical? I think so. The laws are there for me as a consumer and I for one am all about working the system in my favor. A lawyer can charge you a few grand to do that for you and get them removed or you can do it yourself with some deliberate effort. It's not easy and you have to keep good records. Is it wrong to answer no on a loan app to the have you ever had a BK or Foreclosure question? I'd say in that case your lying and breaking the law as it applies but good look on them even caring cause they can't prove it. So thats all there is to it.


Well, there are several reasons to think this is unethical if not illegal. First, we have the tragedy of the commons. Just as people who abuse antibiotics by "working the system in their favor" end up helping to create super-resistant bacteria that endanger everyone, people who abuse the bankruptcy system will end up killing it. The legislature will not stand idly by and allow people to do this.

Second, it appears from a quick Google search that in order to dispute an item on your credit report, you need to say that you believe the item is incorrect, and state your opinion as to the facts. So what do you say? "I never had these credit cards?" "I never filed for bankruptcy?" A simple fix for this would be to require that people who dispute credit items do so under penalty of perjury - as in "I certify that the above information is true to the best of my knowledge," and if you're lying, you can go to jail. I would be disappointed to learn that this isn't already the case.

Beyond the legal and ethical issues, there's just the practical issue of does this process actually work. He's saying that if you can't get a credit card record off you need to be persistant. This seems to mean that if you dispute a credit card, and the bureau gets proof it's valid, you just dispute it again. You would think that after the first few times this happened, the bureaus would learn that someone who disputes an item is likely to dispute other items or the same item again. They could easily have a file folder for you in which the simply place a copy of the proof for future reference. In fact, here's a quote from the FTC's web page How to Dispute Credit Report Errors (emphasis added):

Consumer reporting companies must investigate the items in question—usually within 30 days—unless they consider your dispute frivolous.


My guess is that the third time you request to have a legitimate credit card record removed from your report that they can just consider all further requests from you to be frivolous, and at least in Syndicatered's case they'd be correct.

Let me revisit some individual things he said:
So if you get everything that made up the BK removed via the 30 day method, than how can the BK possibly stand if everything it represented cant be accounted for?


I'd say the fact that there's a public record at a courthouse of your bankruptcy or foreclosure would mean they could keep it even if you manage to annoy them into removing credit card records.

so when you get say a Foreclosure they lodge you in county records, depending on your city where you recieved the foreclosure or BK determines you may have a little bit different variation because of how your court system handles its paperwork. So your courthouse will either house your record in the court house in an offsite store place. There are only two people who are actually allowed access to your file, you and the clerk of courts.


That's very interesting. Care to explain how any Joe Schmoe with an internet connection can get a link to, say, this document?

In case you don't want to click it, here's what it looks like: