| As FDIC Joins Otting Attacking
CRA Wells Fargo Settles Philly Discrimination Amid
Whitewash of Mortgage Data
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
Honduras
- The
Source - The
Root - etc
Bronx / SDNY, Dec
16 – With
US Comptroller
of the
Currency
Joseph Otting
on December 12
formally
moving along
with the FDIC
to undermine
the
Community
Reinvestment
Act, on
December 16
Inner City
Press / Fair
Finance Watch
filed a CRA
protest with
the FDIC to
Flushing
Bank's
application to
acquire Empire
National Bank,
see below.
In
other fair
lending bank
violation
news, now
Wells Fargo
has settled discrimination
charges by the Philadelphia
government.
The case is City
of
Philadelphia
v. Wells Fargo
& Co. et
al., 17-cv-02203,
in the U.S.
District Court
for the
Eastern
District of
Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia
said Monday it
has reached a
deal with
Wells Fargo
Bank to settle
the city's charges
of
discriminating
against
minorities in
its home loans
in exchange
for $10
million toward
city programs
to promote
homeownership
and cleaning
up vacant
lots. Philadelphia
filed suit in
2017, detailing
that from 2004
to 2014, Wells
Fargo targeted
minority
homeowners in
the city with
high-risk,
high-interest
mortgages even
when their
credit
qualified them
for better
offers, which
allegedly led
to higher
rates of
foreclosures
on those loans:
predatory lending.
$500,000 will
go to the
Philadelphia
Horticultural
Society's
"LandCare"
program, which
clears and
cleans vacant
lots, then
sets up basic
plantings that
can be mowed
and maintained
by local
landscape
contractors or
neighbors.
As if a
parallel universe on December
12 in a badly-webcast FDIC
meeting Director Jelena
McWilliams said that where she
was born there is a phrase
about if you can't go to the
Hill, the Hill comes to you -
the reference was to Rep.
Maxine Waters - the FDIC sold
its credibility to Otting. And
why then are the regulators
like the FDIC, now with the
connivance now only of the OCC
but also CFPB, making it
harder for the public to
enforce CRA?
The Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau
under Kathy Kraninger issued
2018 Home Mortgage Disclosure
Act data - with an interface
without any racial or ethnic
information unlike 2017 and
every previous year,
undermining the entire purpose
of the HMDA law. See this
page and this December 16
filing with FDIC, cc-ed to the
CFPB:
December 16,
2019 Via e-mail
Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation Attn:
John Vogel, Regional Director
and Doreen R. Eberley, Jim
Watkins, Robert P. Cordeiro,
Scott D. Strockoz 350 Fifth
Avenue, Suite 1200 New York,
NY 10118-0110
Re: Timely First
Comment on Applications by
Flushing Bank to Acquire
Empire National Bank
Dear Regional
Director Vogel and others at
the FDIC:
This is a timely
first comment opposing and
requesting an extension of the
FDIC's public comment period
on the Applications by
Flushing Bank to Acquire
Empire National
Bank.
Flushing Bank in
2018, for race specified
loans, made six times more
loans to whites than to
African Americans, entirely
out of keeping with the
demographics of its
market.
Compare the
demographics of its lending to
the geography: 68 loans to
Queens, 35 in Manhattan, 27 in
The Bronx, 35 in Manhattan,
five on Staten Island and 24
in Westchester
County.
Inner City Press
/ Fair Finance Watch would
like to and has a right to
submit more detailed HMDA
data. But for the record, the
Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau for 2018 data has
unilaterally removed the
ability of the public to view
HMDA data by race on its
website, which the FFIEC /
Federal Reserve allowed in
previous years and the CFBP
did even in 2017.
Inner City Press
/ Fair Finance Watch contends
that the CFPB's move is both
anti-public and
illegal.
For further
context, last week the FDIC
opted in a party line vote to
go with the OCC of ex-banker
Otting which is trying to
further weaken the CRA, and
has already in rogue-like
fashion barred the public from
comment on charter conversion
and even merger applications
like that involving Chinatown
FSB earlier this
year.
In this context,
Inner City Press / Fair
Finance Watch is demanding an
extension of this comment
period by the FDIC, its
intervention with the CFPB to
restore access on the website
itself to 2018 HMDA data, a
reversal of the FDIC's
anti-CRA moves, and on the
current record the denial by
the FDIC of these
application(s). Thank
you for your prompt
attention,
Matthew R. Lee
Inner City Press / Fair
Finance Watch
cc's incl
Brenda.Muniz [at] cfpb.gov
Watch
this site.
***
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