[samstave]

What would happen if the DB was widely available and many many people just randomly and inexplicably opened as many ranom accounts as possible - it would cause chaos in the economy.

What would an accurate "what if" scenario like this look like?

[_jal]

That's the first five minutes. Then the market for new consumer credit would seize up, banking share prices would flip out, and talking heads on cable would have something new to hyperventilate over.

Overall, many thousands of folks would have their home plans/vacation/card-flipping/whatever plans screwed up, some thousands would have a more severe financial problem, the banks would muddle through, "we'd" rebuild the financial-surveillance system over again, and it would probably be less stupid in some ways at the cost of being more uniformly intrusive.