North American Markets

00:25:21 It's a three digit number that summarizes all the information in your credit file. A credit scores helps a lender decide how likely you are to repay any money you borrow. This is National Credit Education Week so all my consumer tips this week will focus on credit scores. The most widely used credit score is the FICO score, computed with formulas developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation. Each lender has its own standard as to what is a good score... 00:28:21

[CC] 00:42:15 First up, the makers of the FICO credit score have unveiled a new website to help determine if you're mortgage worthy for a refi, modification, etcetera. Fill out a few forms and see which products you may be eligible for. For this one I had to bring in John, back with us now. John, I want to guess that you're a fan of this whereas I am not. Tell me. You know, I was initially a little skeptical about this one, too, so I actually did quite a bit of sleuthing. What I found out is there's really no ulterior motive. This is just another way to get a little deeper into the whole consumer empowerment space. I tried to find any place on the website where I could buy something and couldn't find it so I have to give them a thumbs up. But at My FICO you can buy something. This is what is called a Halo effect. When you need some good buzz you put a halo on yourself. You can go directly to find out if you qualify for the president's plan at MakingHomeAffordable.gov, at Hud. gov and at FinancialStability.gov. All right? 00:45:15

00:11:41 Stocks in the News: Active stocks featured. GR; NYSE Most Actives. GR;IBM. GR; PepsiCo. GR; Pepsi Bottling Group. GR; Pepsiamericas. GR; Eaton Corp. GR; Roper. GR; Capital One. GR;Energizer Holdings. GR;Lennar Corp. GR; Transocean Inc. GR; Fair Isaac. GR;McMoran Exploration. GR; NASDAQ Most Actives. GR; BreitBurn Energy. 00:15:53

00:56:13 It's a three digit number that summarizes all the information in your credit file. A credit scores helps a lender decide how likely you are to repay any money you borrow. This is National Credit Education Week so all my consumer tips this week will focus on credit scores. The most widely used credit score is the FICO score, computed with formulas developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation. Each lender has its own standard as to what is a good score... 00:59:13

[CC] 00:50:27 Deb in west LA on KCAL 9, go ahead. Thank you for taking my call. A lot of the banks, especially Bank of America, shutting down credit cards even though I paid more than the minimum, they are just shutting them down. Did that happen to you? Yes. How do I get my credit rating back up again when they continually work against me? You said how did the credit rating get effective? The developer of the FICO, this is happening to millions of people and good credit customers are getting credit lines either eliminated or certainly reduced by a lot. They should not have closed down or access to the credit if you are a big credit customer, balance isn't much more than one third, but if they lower the line that means you have a greater percentage of your balance, that is the real problem. Get your credit report and get a free FICO from several sources. There's a good chance it has not been affected yet. 00:53:27

[CC] 00:16:38 ... One of the key questions, though, that I don't know the answer to is whether or not the credit companies are raising rates on just the bad borrowers. I'm guessing both. 32 million people in the past year or so had their term limit shortened. About 22 million of the 32 million had a 770 FICO score and were in good credit. It's like an insurance premium. It offsets the losses. If I don't like it, I cannot take on credit card debt. What's the big deal? Or you migrate it, credit card surfing. That's getting harder, though. There's not as much credit out there. There's still plenty of them out there... 00:22:38

00:47:56 TZ; On the Move: Stocks to watch today. GR; Real Time Flash. GR; Citigroup, Goldman Sachs warns of credit losses. GR; Fair Isaac, downgraded by Wedbush Morgan. GR; Sun Trust Banks, downgraded by Stern Agee. GR; Halliburton, beat estimates. GR; Weatherford Intl., North America is weak. GR; Saks Inc., JP Morgan upgrades. Bertha Coombs reporting. 00:49:19

[CC] 00:38:43 With home prices dropping by the day, a lot of first time home buyers are ready to dive in and buy that first home. Others want to sell and maybe move on. There's one thing holding a lot of people back, good credit. So how do you get your credit score up so you can buy the house of your dreams? Richard is here to help this morning. Good morning. Good morning. Let's talk about credit scores. We're talking about your FICO score. The best you can have is 850. But what do you really need? The minimum credit score is around 620 in order to make a home purchase. Good credit score is around 700, to 750. So if I were call you up and say, I want to get my credit score upright now. What's the first thing to tell. Well, some of the first t hings, make sure you have made your payments ontime. A couple of other things, how much credit do you have outstanding and how long have you had that credit... 00:41:43

[CC] 00:38:00 With home prices dropping by the day, a lot of first time home buyers are ready to dive in and buy that first home. Others want to sell and maybe move on. There's one thing holding a lot of people back, good credit. So how do you get your credit score up so you can buy the house of your dreams? Richard is here to help this morning. Good morning. Good morning. Let's talk about credit scores. We're talking about your FICO score. The best you can have is 850. But what do you really need? The minimum credit score is around 620 in order to make a home purchase. Good credit score is around 700, to 750. So if I were call you up and say, I want to get my credit score upright now. What's the first thing to tell. Well, some of the first t hings, make sure you have made your payments ontime. A couple of other things, how much credit do you have outstanding and how long have you had that credit... 00:41:00