Banking and Credit
Since the Great Depression, Congress has passed a series of laws to preserve stability in the banking and credit industries, protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices and make affordable credit available to middle class and low-income families and small businesses. Beginning in the 1980s, the deregulation of financial institutions has fed speculative booms and devastating busts. Privatization of low-cost government credit for student loans and mortgages and weaker consumer protections has driven up the cost of credit and put consumers at risk.
Commentary
Information is power… and that’s the problem
Why #OccupyWallStreet?
Cry Wolf Quotes
The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites. The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans.
…in an attempt to increase homeownership-particularly among minorities and the less affluent-an attack on underwriting standards has been undertaken by virtually every branch of the government since the early 1990s.
CRA has enabled special interest groups to collect billions of dollars from banks under agreements that are kept secret. Even the citizens that these groups purport to represent have no way of knowing how the groups spend the money they get from banks. That s why I hope the Senate will approve a sunshine amendment that will add accountability to this process and bring these agreements into, the light of day.
Any review of the history of the affordable mortgage movement in America demonstrates the power that CRA had in helping to shred mortgage underwriting standards throughout the industry and exposing us to the kind of market meltdown we've experienced. “If form follows, soon banks and other financial institutions operating under CRA will be cudgeled into lending to small businesses based on race and gender, which will be the opening of a new round of lower lending standards in the very risky small-business sector. The effort to save and extend CRA in the face of its role in the mortgage market's massive meltdown is testament to the unique power of this legislation to nourish an entire industry of nonprofits that, like Acorn, have been reliable supporters of politicians such as Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and a former community organizer and associate of Acorn by the name of Barack Obama.
Related Laws and Rules
Evidence
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Banking Lobby's Warnings About CARD Act Disproven
What happened after credit card reform bill passed Congress in 2009 (it worked).
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The Successes of the CARD Act
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes exactly what the act did and what the effects were one year later.
Backgrounders & Briefs
A Timeline of the CARD Act
An interactive timeline of credit card reform.
Resources
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition works against unfair lending and banking practices, particularly those targeted towards low and middle income families.
