Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

WASHINGTON DC, September 12 -- With Fannie Mae protested also in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Philadelphia, the near invisibility of the issue of foreclosures and predatory lending in both political parties' conventions came to the fore.

   Whole communities still stand in ruins, while the Citigroups of the world have moved on. JPMorgan Chase went on post bailout to play casino in London, while its Community Reinvestment Act record further declined. Who will stop them?

  The CRA is only enforced in connection with -- in opposition to -- bank mergers, but the regulators generally rubber stamp them.

   The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fined Capital One for predatory credit card add-ons, did not tell the Federal Reserve about the investigation before it approved Capital One's purchase of ING DIRECT.
   
   When Inner City Press requested records about the merger approval under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve Board withheld and blacked out much of the information.  More recently it has blacked out information Inner City Press requested about what the Fed had done, and not done, about the LIBOR interest rate fixing scandal.

   What was learned from, or changed after, the predatory lending meltdown and the bailouts, after (the first round of) Occupy Wall Street?  Very little it seems. Protests continue. Watch this site.