Ocasio-Cortez rails against Equifax

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took aim at Equifax over the weekend, criticizing the credit reporting agency — which disclosed a massive data breach in 2017 — and its peers for fueling what she described as a “dice game” and a “broken” system of credit scoring that can affect people’s ability to get loans, secure housing and gain employment.

“Also a good moment to note that in the wake of the Equifax scandal, privatized credit scoring is a dice game & the credit score system is very broken too,” she said Saturday on Twitter.

Ocasio-Cortez was responding to another Twitter user who said it took decades for him to repair his credit, which was scored in the low 400s, or what Experian, another credit reporting agency, defines as a “very poor” rating.

Ocasio-Cortez herself has been the target of unsubstantiated claims that she has low creditworthiness, a false rumor Snopes has debunked, in an apparent attempt to damage her credibility as a new member of the House Financial Services Committee.

She signaled that the committee may take up the issue of credit scoring in the future.

Equifax said it spent more than $116 million related to the “cybersecurity incident” in its latest earnings report, up from $87 million during the same time last year. The company reported more than $832 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2018, about the same as 2017.

Business Insider had reported on the increase in short positions.

Ocasio-Cortez said Jan. 15 on Twitter that her priorities on the Financial Services Committee are “digging into the student loan crisis, examining for-profit prisons/ICE detention, and exploring the development of public & postal banking.”