In
Citigroup's
Subprime Circus CFO Wrist Slapped, Regulator Hired as Treasury
De-Fanged, Data
Disparate
By
Matthew
R. Lee
SOUTH
BRONX,
August 4 -- Predatory lending by the country's largest banks,
allowed by complicit or even conflicted regulators, is supposedly a
thing of the past. At Citigroup, for example, former chief financial
officer Gary Crittenden is paying a $100,000 fine to the Security &
Exchange Commission.
Despite the relatively small size of the fine,
compared with Mr. Crittenden's Citigroup compensation, we are told
that this is the new era of accountability on Wall Street.
And
so Citigroup
brags to Inner City Press and others that it has hired
a new director
of fair lending, Irene Fang, noting that she previously worked as a
fair lending examiner of large banks for the Treasury Department's
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- the regulator of
Citibank.
Some
thought that
there were anti revolving door provisions in place, in the Dodd Frank
financial reform legislation or otherwise. But Citigroup brags about
hiring a regulator with whom they must have negotiated with while Ms.
Fang was supposed to be examining Citi for fair lending.
Can you say,
conflict of interest?
Simultaneously, Citi CEO Vikram Pandit named Zion Shohet to "manage"
the Dodd - Frank bill for Citi. They seem to be managing it through the
revolving door. One
wonders what Treasury Secretary Geithner
thinks or will do about this.
Citi's Pandit & Treasury's Geithner, New York, predatory lending
revolving door not shown
South
Bronx based
Fair Finance Watch has requested and reviewed Citigroup's 2009 Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act data, which notes which mortgages are over
the “rate spread” of five percentage points over Treasury
securities for first lien, three percent over for subordinate liens.
These
data show
that Citigroup in 2009 confined African Americans to higher-cost
loans above this rate spread 2.25 times more frequently than
whites,and confined Latinos to higher-cost loans above the rate
spread 1.72 times more frequently than whites. What did the OCC do
about this, before Ms. Fang jumped over for a job at Citigroup?
Tomorrow
August 5
the Federal Reserve will be holding a hearing in San Francisco about
HMDA. One of the Fed-invited panelists is from the Bank of Hawaii,
run by former FDIC chief Donna Tanoue.
Fair Finance
Watch requested
the 2009 HMDA data from Bank of Hawaii and rather than providing it
electronically, on disk so it could be analyzed, Bank of Hawaii
provided it on paper, printed out, unanalyzable. The Fed has allowed
this practice, and now invites such a bank to testify about HMDA.
Is
it safe, then?
No.
* * *
As
Obama's
Bank
Fees Under-Target Citigroup and AIG, Geithner Questioned
By
Matthew
R. Lee
NEW
YORK,
January 14 -- The night before President Barack Obama was
scheduled to unveil a scheme of fees on the three or four dozen
largest financial firms, the Administration held a then embargoed
conference call with the press.
Several
questions
centered
around why the auto manufacturers which took TARP funds
would not also be fined. Others wondered, if the fee regime yielded
more than what the government and taxpayers lost through TARP before
it expired in ten years, would the money still be collected and how
would it be used?
The
Administration
representative, who the press was told could only be called a "senior
administration official," replied that once the basis of
calculating the fee had been decided on, car companies didn't fit it.
Before
all
questions
were answered, the Administration signed off, noting that
Obama would be making his announcement at 11:20 the next day. Among
the questions not taken or answered was this, from Inner City Press:
why assess all of the financial firms under the program at the same
rate, fifteen basis points?
Citigroup,
for
example,
received much more TARP and other payouts than other covered
banks. And as South Bronx based Fair Finance Watch and others showed
at the time, the government tried to help Citigroup scoop up
Wachovia, until another less subpsized offer won the day. Why benefit
Citigroup again by treating it like other, less subprime heavy banks?
The same holds for AIG.
Geither and AIG, Citigroup not shown
The
"senior
Administration official" went out of his way to portray the
program as a matter of principle for not only Obama but also "his"
Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner.
To
some, the timing
is meant to blunt renewed bipartisan criticism of Geithner, this time
only only for not paying his taxes to the IRS -- which would be
collecting the fees from the financial firms -- but for having told
AIG not to disclose the preferential basis of the bailouts it was
receiving, while he was at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
But
it was hard to
note that his seeming favorite, AIG, and the bank most benefited by
his Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Citigroup, are benefited by the
structure of this proposed Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee program.
In fact, some
say it has an aspect of a Tim Geithner bail out.
And
that's... a
question that should be asked, and answered. Watch this site.
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