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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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SOUTH BRONX, Feb 15 – The Community Reinvestment Act is now under fire by Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting, who cashed out of his position with OneWest Bank in California by overseeing fake comments in favor its acquisition by the CIT Group.

   It's part of a deregulatory trend that is supposedly being opposed in 2020. But billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who remains in the Democratic Party primary while others are out, has attacked the CRA as a cause of the 2008 financial crisis (when it was in fact cronies at Citigroup / Citifinancial, Deutsche Bank et al who did it, for money).

To be fair, Bloomberg said: "I would say it all probably started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone. Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said people in these neighborhoods are poor, they’re not going to be able to pay off their mortgages. Tell your salesmen don’t go into those areas. And then Congress got involved and local elected officials as well. And said, “Oh, that’s not fair. These people should be able to get credit.” And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn’t as good as you would like." This is the opposition? Might it be clarified, or piled on? Inner City Press will have more on this.

   Otting, emboldened, devoted the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to weakening or destroying the Community Reinvestment Act which provides for the public process that he subverted with fake comments.

   Inner City Press, which opposed the merger and then pursued a Freedom of Information Act request for all documents about Otting's fraud, soon found its and Fair Finance Watch's comments to the OCC being rejected, or ignored, or returned. 

  While Inner City Press' FOIA requests get fee waivers from the Federal Reserve and a range of agencies in the US and beyond, Otting's OCC suddenly started denying them, hindering access to the merger applications on which CRA is enforced.   

Otting is trying to push through this CRA-killing proposal on a short comment period, cognizant of the other CRA, the Congressioal Review Act. But it is obvious that even banks want more time.

On January 26, in advance of Otting's belated January 29 House of Representatives appearance, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch submitted a formal comment, including: January 26, 2020  Re: Docket ID OCC-2018-0008 &  - total opposition to OCC/FDIC plan to weaken CRA 

To whom it may concern at the OCC and FDIC: On behalf of Fair Finance Watch, and Inner City Press, and in my personal capacity, this is a timely comment opposing the proposal by Comptroller Joseph Otting and the FDIC to weaken the CRA.

Enforcing the CRA including through commenting to the Federal Reserve and FDIC, and OCC under previous Comptrollers, the results have been new bank branches in the South Bronx, and lending and consumer protection commitments well beyond.  Some advocacy, from 2001, here;  2002 here (Wells Fargo);  jump cut to 2015, here (due to 5000 character restriction)  and more  

But since Otting became Comptroller, we have seen timely comments ignored, and been denied access to bank merger applications by a retaliatory imposition of FOIA fees. The Federal Reserve and other federal agencies, like the OCC pre-Otting, grant Inner City Press FOIA fee waivers. Under Otting, the OCC does not.

On Chinatown FSB, the OCC refused to consider a timely comment. The OCC unilaterally determined not to accept public comments on a major bank's charter conversion application, which it rubber stamped.  This has been rogue-like behavior. It is in keeping with our experience with Otting when, as head of One West, he oversaw false comments submitted to regulators to support One West's merger with CIT. People wrote it and said they had not commented; the regulators asked Otting's OneWest's counsel - and there the trail of evidence ends, for now. See, for the record (including the record on this timely request that Otting be recused and the proposal withdrawn), here.

 We are totally opposed to Otting's and the FDIC's proposals and think for the reasons set forth above, including actions at OneWest and more recently trying to intimidate community groups, Otting must be recused and the proposal withdrawn. We will have further comments.  Matthew R Lee Fair Finance Watch (and Inner City Press) New York. Watch this site. 

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