From the Case Files of We Did NOT Know That: Equifax senior managers sell shares

by Angela K. Durden
Technology inventor protecting creator's copyrights. Business writer, novelist, songwriter, and Citizen Journalist.

Timeline:

• Major hack of Equifax customer data goes "undiscovered"
• Three senior managers sell their shares in the company
• Major hack of Equifax is made public
• Share price tumbles
• Three senior managers claim no knowledge of hack before they sell shares
• Bloomberg reports on story with liberal use of quotes which sure seem ironic

Look, there's a reason I've been seeking a credit score of zero these last few years. This  whole credit-score thing is a game to get consumers to spend more.

You want the stuff.
They have the stuff.
Them has the money.
But do you deserve the stuff?
Can you afford to pay us back the money?


I once knew a man in Texas who happily lived in a cash-based world. That is, if he didn't have the money in his wallet, he didn't buy it. When he was in his mid-40s he got a girlfriend. When she did a background check on him and found out he didn't have a credit score, she inquired as to why.

Now, this girlfriend proceeded to hound him in much the same way that Delilah hounded Samson. That is to say, she nagged the hell out of him until finally to shut her up and make her happy so she'd keep giving him the good stuff he craved, he went out and got a small loan so he could pay it back in a timely fashion and get a good credit score so that his girlfriend would feel like he was worthy of being her boyfriend.

Fast forward two years.

Girlfriend is gone. Loan is almost paid off. And he is informed his credit score "is almost there" and if only he would get these credit cards and pay them off in a timely fashion why he would be a great candidate for another and even bigger loan.

He took cash to the bank and paid off the loan. Told everybody else to go to hell. I am unclear as to whether or not he ever got another girlfriend. If I was a betting woman I would say...

...no, he didn't.

But, you see, the senior managers at Equifax, those folks who manage our worthiness, well, one could rightly say they are gaming the system. Now, whose to say these same folks haven't gamed the credit reporting system in such a way as to make them look very credit worthy?

Hey, I'm just asking.