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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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SDNY / LA, Jan 13 –  When City National Bank in Los Angeles was proposed to be bought by Royal Bank of Canada in 2015, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch raised issues to the Federal Reserve and waited for a credible review and determination.

   It is still waiting.   

Despite the banks jumping the gun and operating together even before approval, and despite the lending disparities, the Fed approved the merger. Since then, Inner City Press has found RBC involved in insider trading in an SDNY case, and named in connection with money laundering for the OneCoin fraud.

  Meanwhile, in Los Angeles in 2018, now RBC owned City National Bank had worsening lending disparities. In the summary data to which Trump's CFPB has reduced public access, in 2018 in the Los Angeles MSA made 937 loans to whites - and only 33 to African Americans and only 37 to Latinos, out of proportion to the demographics of the LA MSA and of other lenders' activities in it.

       Significantly, while City National Bank in 2018 in the LA MSA originated 5.7 loans to whites for each of its denials to whites, for African Americans it made only 2.2 loans to every denial. RBC's City National is 2.6 times more disparate to African Americans than whites, denying then 2.6 times more frequently than whites, worse than its peers. Inner City Press will have more on this.

   Wells Fargo, one of the less than a handful of banks which dominate the industry in the United States, is asking a federal court to shut down a website. More on Patreon here.  

  Wells Fargo's motion, filed on January 8, complains that "Defendants have re-posted the very website that defames and threatens Wells Fargo and its employees, agents, attorneys, and vendors involved in this litigation. See Exhibit A, http://www.wwshrimp.com, Website Screen Shots captured 1/7/20. Defendants should now be immediately ordered to take down the Website and should be permanently enjoined from re-posting any of its content again in any public forum."

    While describing a bank or its lawyers as prostitutes is not nice - and may as to the bank reverse the analysis - Inner City Press finds it highly problematic that a mega-bank, particularly one so recently bailed out by the public, should be trying to shut down a website.

We will continue to follow this case, and many others, with a particular line of stories about misdeeds by banks. Watch - and feel free to contact - site. More on Patreon here.  

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