In the wake of the recession and its gradual retreat from the American economy, people who are stuck in the middle when it comes to credit are finding it more difficult to jump back onto the credit wagon.
Thanks to the recession, changing credit card regulations and new perceptions about who and who doesn't deserve credit, the credit markets - once a haven that covered every single person and all credit demographics - now have become a discriminatory marketplace that focuses on providing lines of credit to those who are the most and least worthy.
Labeled by some as the "dead zone", people with fair or OK credit are finding it far more difficult now to obtain credit than they did five years ago. Credit companies have extended their lines to those who most deserve it and those who do not, in an attempt to make lots of money via predatory lending. These tactics were curbed in some regard thanks to a series of legal reforms passed in the United States in 2009 and 2010 but card issuers are out in full force in 2012, exploiting every single loophole they can find in order to make extra money from cash-strapped people with low credit.
The main long-term motivation behind this approach is the simple fact that people with fair or OK credit were the biggest liabilities following the onset of the recession. People with poor credit were no more likely on average to not pay their bill, while people with excellent credit typically were unaffected by the economy.
Several credit issuers, including Chase Credit, have explained that they have no immediate desire to return to this segment of the credit market until all the fundamentals of the economy have re-solidified. Typically, people with fair or OK credit are defined as having a credit score between 620 - 659.