E-Book Overview
The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing. In Creditworthy, the first comprehensive history of this crucial American institution, Josh Lauer explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. Ultimately, Lauer argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports—and, later, credit ratings and credit scores—credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic 'facts.' It is fundamentally concerned with—and determines—our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.
E-Book Content
Creditworthy
A HISTORY OF CONSUMER SURVEILLANCE AND FINANCIAL
Josh Lauer
IDENTITY IN AMERICA
Creditworthy
Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism
Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism Series Editors: Devin Fergus, Louis Hyman, Bethany Moreton, and Julia Ott Capitalism has served as an engine of growth, a source of inequality, and a catalyst for conflict in American history. While remaking our material world, capitalism’s myriad forms have altered—and been shaped by—our most fundamental experiences of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and citizenship. This series takes the full measure of the complexity and significance of capitalism, placing it squarely back at the center of the American experience. By drawing insight and inspiration from a range of disciplines and alloying novel methods of social and cultural analysis with the traditions of labor and business history, our authors take history “from the bottom up” all the way to the top. Capital of Capital: Money, Banking, and Power in New York City, by Steven H. Jaffe and Jessica Lautin From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs, by Joshua Clark Davis
Creditworthy A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America
Josh Lauer
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia .edu Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lauer, Josh (Professor of communication), author. Title: Creditworthy : a history of consumer surveillance and financial identity in America / Josh Lauer. Other titles: Credit worthy Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Series: Columbia studies in the history of U.S. capitalism | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016050103 (print) | LCCN 2017015938 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231544627 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231168083 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Credit analysis—United States—History. Classification: LCC HG3701 (ebook) | LCC HG3701