Man in a Shed: Identity theft - how hard is it really to stop ?

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Identity theft - how hard is it really to stop ?

Just listened to a report on Identity theft in the UK. I have a solution - but it seems almost too simple.

The major long term draw back of being a victim of such a crime seems to be damage to your credit rating. Which amongst other things prevents you from getting new credit cards, loans or mortgages.

Hold on a minute - why not allow people to switch their credit rating to 'off' - hence no new cards or loans etc could be issued from anywhere. They could then request it to be activated for the time they need it after which they could turn it off again.

Too simple ?

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman