Ever wonder how credit agencies seem to know your entire credit history? Bought a home? Had some late credit card payments. Finished paying off those student loans? The credit agency has all that info at its fingertips.
Credit agencies collect credit information on you every time you make a credit transaction. That information, passed on from your lenders to credit reporting agencies, is called a trade line. The trade line is a record of all credit activity for each credit account under your identity.
Trade lines are used by credit reporting agencies to give you, the borrower, a credit score, like a FICO score. Credit scores signal to potential lenders if you have your, um...poop in a group...or not. The lower your credit score, the higher the rates and offers you’ll receive, since you appear to be a greater risk.
Maybe you did a really bad job with that one credit card, paying late on the reg, and you'd like to erase its trade line. You can delete that credit card account...but the trade line for it will still show up on credit agencies’ reports for at least three to five more years.
Better get on that now, then.
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![Finance: What is the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act Of 2006?](https://media1.shmoop.com/video/thumbnails/COURSE.FINANCE.700_770x433.jpg)
Finance: What is the Credit Rating Agenc...4 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is the credit rating agency reform
act of two thousand six otherwise known as crack are
out out something like that All right yeah that's How
the real pros said anyway this act was meant to
improve the quality of company credit ratings like a blindfold
and dartboard should not be involved in making up are
you know coming up with corporate credit ratings Well the
law was ironically enacted in the hope that we would
avoid nightmares like the subprime mortgage crisis that almost brought
down the finances of while the entire country in world
And yes it worked in the same way that a
scale works in an embarrassing episode of the biggest loser
The idea was that the big three agencies moody's s
and p and fitch were colluding with each other and
raiding every security as a okay sort of the same
way wall street cell site analysts were leaned upon in
the nineties by bankers who paid them to rate every
company of strong by so that the companies would favor
the investment banks when doing lucrative secondary offerings and other
personal wealth management services for the founders and senior executives
Newly ridge from you know aipo booty The big three
then produced a product that wasn't reflective of the real
risks inherent in the marketplace Basically they had been labeling
pink slime and hot dog meat as great a sirloin
Yeah well the act made it much easier for smaller
firms to compete for business by doing high quality research
and not being afraid to give bad ratings tow bad
money butchers will The credit rating agency reform act of
o sixth gives both businesses and the government the tools
they need to fight off the shady hucksters of the
world And make sure the pink slime never you know 00:01:55.443 --> [endTime] such a cz your plate financially
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