Fully 35% of a person’s FICO score boils down to one’s history of making payments on time. The average FICO score today now is down to 690 after the borrowing spree of the past seven years. Yet to obtain a plain-vanilla 30-year fixed rate mortgage, the minimum score is 760. For a 15-year HELOC, it is 740. And, for a three-year auto loan, the minimum FICO is 720. This is a primary reason why the credit cycle is not about to be revived. It is not that standards are too tough as much as the unprecedented borrowing binge over the past seven years has left the household sector, at the margin, with a credit profile that is too risky for the banking community to justify to their shareholders.

This URL (from Ritholtz) is no longer valid ... It looks like it was meant to be a one-time-use URL that is only usable during a very brief window. The excerpt you/Barry provided isn't found anywhere else at the moment, and based on the comments at The Big Picture, no one has yet found it elsewhere.

Similar numerical data is readily found elsewhere; example:

About 60% of people have scores of 700 or more. At 720, a person is considered a safe risk and typically receives a loan without a problem and at a low interest rate. The FICO score is weighted as follows:

* 35% payment history. Having a long history of making payments on time and no missed payments on all credit accounts is one of the top things that creditors look for.

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RE: Merrill Lynch on how fucked things are