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[Urbi_et_Orbi]

This story is HUGELY interesting and important.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/27consume.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=raj%20date&st=cse

Once again, Prosper finds itself having to issue "corrective" statements regarding their press coverage.

http://blog.prosper.com/2010/10/27/prosper-response-new-york-times-article-october-27-2010/

[Mtnchick]

LOBBY!

Wow.

[312lender]

+1

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/10/27/raj-date-is-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-consumers-since-elizabeth-warren/

[312lender]

Urbi - Although you might understand this to be anti-prosper news, please cover up your erection.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

Urbi - Although you might understand this to be anti-prosper news, please cover up your erection.

I understand it to be a piece of significant news interest to the Prosper user community. 

We all pretty much already know what your role is on this forum.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

Considering it's a piece about ethics and political influence, you know it's a sad state of affairs when Prosper's top two objections to the piece are the assertions that Prosper is a "low-doc" and a "sub-prime" lender - and disputing the well established fact that there are high losses on the platform.

[Mtnchick]

Considering it's a piece about ethics and political influence, you know it's a sad state of affairs when Prosper's top two objections to the piece are the assertions that Prosper is a "low-doc" and a "sub-prime" lender - and disputing the well established fact that there are high losses on the platform.

I LOL'd (really!) when I read that.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

From Prosper's "refute"

Shortly after the article appeared, another industry journalist observed the egregious slant of the article and refuted it with a blog posting entitled “A Failed Dirt-Finding Expedition On The CFPB”.

Mike Konczal is NOT a journalist and "new deal 2.0" is NOT what anyone would even remotely consider a news outlet.

Rather, Konczal is a Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, who clearly shares what he calls his "personal opinion" - and also incidates he has a personal relationship with Date.

For Prosper to refer to this piece as "an industry journalist" observing an "egregious slant" is incredibly sloppy and a wildly insufficient way to attempt to draw attention away from the NYT piece.  Then again, readers here should go read all the pieces
for themselves and draw whatever conclusion they think is appropriate.

[bluestar148]

He looks like the cat that swallowed the canary.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

By the way, Prosper's refute is way too retarded to not safe-keep.  They'd be crazy to leave this piece of trash up on their blog without modifying it.

This refute is so silly and poorly conceived it makes you long for the days when Shira Levina was arranging conference calls.

10/27/10 posted by Prosper Blog    

Today a highly misleading article appeared on the subject of one of our former board members, Raj Date. Raj has just been appointed by Elizabeth Warren to a special advisory post at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We are very proud of Raj’s track record of consumer advocacy and championing reform in the financial services industry.
The article made several erroneous statements about Prosper and Raj’s relationship with us, despite our having shared information with the reporter while he was writing the article that directly refuted his assertions. In fact, several of the assertions are patently incorrect based on a cursory review of our site. The reporter chose to ignore the facts and go ahead with the slanted perspective for reasons that are not clear.

The misstatements and misrepresentations include the following:

■Suggesting Prosper is a sub-prime lender: obviously refuted by the fact that our average bureau score of borrowers is over 700. In fact it was 715 in September.
■Suggesting Prosper arranges low-doc loans. The fact is that our underwriting and verification procedures are highly rigorous, and include extensive documentation of employment, income, and identity of the borrowers.
■Suggesting that there is uncontrolled risk and high losses in Prosper’s loan portfolio. As clearly illustrated in our recent report on risk performance, losses on assets booked in the last 15 months are beating expectations and are 1/3 of the loss rate on loans booked in 2007 and 2008.
■The reporter failed to note Prosper’s long advocacy of consumers and the fact that Prosper’s CEO Chris Larsen has been a champion of consumer privacy and protection for over 10 years.
■Suggesting Raj’s relationship with Prosper was “rarely reported” when in fact it was properly disclosed in all relevant SEC filings and on our website.
Shortly after the article appeared, another industry journalist observed the egregious slant of the article and refuted it with a blog posting entitled “A Failed Dirt-Finding Expedition On The CFPB”.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

For all I know, Date is a great guy who would do a fine job with this, but the NYT is right to at least point out the potential for conflict.

Prosper, on the other hand, reveals itself to continue to beat on that same tired old drum of misdirection and obfuscation.

[TotoMMB]

All I've learned is that Prosper considers blogs as on par with old media stalwarts.

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

+1

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/10/27/raj-date-is-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-consumers-since-elizabeth-warren/

Your "blogger source" referring to the New York Times piece about Raj Date and Prosper Marketplace (Prosper.com) as an outrageous "hit-piece" pretty much suggests your "credibility crutch" hasn't actually read the piece, which is quite fair and balanced.

Obviously, neither Prosper, its employees nor the lobbyist community at large has anything substantive with which to respond to this article, other than hurling irrelevant insults.  This, of course, is nothing new, but pretty much the same thing we've been observing for the last 4 years.

[kenL]

Everything in the article about default rates was probably accurate. When complaining about the article Prosper should have said something like "yes, it is true we had very high default rates through 2008, but since relaunch default rates have dropped and 2.0/3.0 lenders are enjoying much higher returns ..." That would have been a much better approach.

As far as dah-tey goes... I'll let others handle that discussion and I'll read.
I was pleasantly reminded of the movie "Joe Dirt". In that movie Spade says "It's pronounced dir-tey"

[Urbi_et_Orbi]

Everything in the article about default rates was probably accurate. When complaining about the article Prosper should have said something like "yes, it is true we had very high default rates through 2008, but since relaunch default rates have dropped and 2.0/3.0 lenders are enjoying much higher returns ..." That would have been a much better approach.

That would definitely have been better, although considering we're less than 18 months into 3.0, it's still dicey to start chest-thumping at this early date about the performance of 3 year loans (the vast majority of which are less than 12 months old).