Whether borrowers were labeled sub-prime depended on opaque, geographically remote credit-scoring bureaucracies.

Evidence

The designation of “sub-prime” had a lot to do with the Byzantine structure of credit ratings agencies, which at times appeared arbitrary and at other times seemed to follow a purely punitive logic, combining statistical models based on general data with information about individuals’ past borrowing history as well as socio-demographic data and with the more subjective impressions of remote functionaries crunching numbers and assessing risk in offices half a continent away. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 194

Categorization

• SEED: Full article or essay angle: the credit ratings agency as a modern oracle — how statistical models, demographic data, and subjective hunches of distant functionaries combine to decide who counts as creditworthy, in effect ‘writing’ economic subjecthood.
• XREF: connects to: Blaming borrowers’ financial ignorance obscures the structural logic of sub-prime lending — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 528; Blaming individual borrowers hides a systemic precariousness produced by finance — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 208

Broader Connections

• Blaming borrowers’ financial ignorance obscures the structural logic of sub-prime lending #corroborates (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 528
• Blaming individual borrowers hides a systemic precariousness produced by finance #corroborates (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 208