At this point, I feel like frozen credit should be the default.

At this point, as a non-American, i feel like you people accepting to have a credit rating system is ludicrous. It's fundamentally broken, has been exposed multiple times, requires gaming to work in yiur favour ("open a credit card as soon as you can, pay little things with it and pay it off immediately to beef up a good score") and brings nothing to you, the people.

For comparison, in France, the national bank keeps a record of all loans anyone has taken. When you apply for a new loan, the bank will check with the national one your history, and decide based on that to lend or not, and inform the national bank of their decision. I suppose Americans can be afraid that "the government" will know their loan history in such a system, but it's not like they can't currently ask and het that information, and they're still more trustworthy than commercial companies that don't care about you ( their clients being banks and companies) or your data beyond their sales.

But it's not like anyone on the US would dare to destroy a profitable industry.

There's an entire industry out there which benefits from the fact that credit is easy to access, even if it exposes people to risks of fraud & identity theft.

If banks' interests were aligned with their users (or legislation forced them to) the whole credit history system would be replaced by something more secure & less prone to fraud.

It's absolutely ludicrous. However, as a consumer, I'm leveraging up because I expect my dollars today to be worth less when the bills are due. I didn't choose, support, or ask for these measures but I'll make the best legal financial decisions for myself without effecting my ability to sleep at night.

This is a harvest year for the banks. The time when we all turn in our property in exchange for chuck-e-cheese tickets. So hold on to your shit no matter how bad it gets. Once it's gone, it probably won't come back. I don't expect the country to recover at all.