fun with your credit rating

Back in college, I had a professor who said his hobby was Credit
Cards. He was trying to goad his credit card issuers into raising his
credit limit high enough to be able to buy a car with plastic. The
basic strategy was to run up his account to the max, pay a month or
two of interest, and then pay it off. And sure enough, after a couple
of iterations of this, he would usually receive a polite notice
indicating his limit had been raised.

I recently returned to Canada after more than a decade in the US, and
in the course of setting up my bank account and renting an apartment,
I was told I basically don't have a credit rating. US and Canadian
ratings do not mingle their essences, you see, and credit ratings only
contain five years worth of information -- longer than I was gone.

And so I have a clean slate. A fresh start. A white page. And just as
my old professor made a hobby of playing with credit card issuers, I
can't help but wonder what I could do as an artist, with the major
credit rating agencies as my canvas.

Johan Larson