| Through Revolving Door Brooks Into
OCC With List of Conflicts As Otting Out to
Black Knight
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE / SDNY
COURT, June 11 – Only a week
ago, May 29 was the last day
for Joseph Otting as US
Comptroller of the Currency, a
position he has misused to
attack the Community
Reinvestment Act he came to
despise as head of OneWest
Bank.
Now a week
later Ottting has cashed out,
taking a paying position on
the board of directors of
Black Knight, described as a
fintech.
But if bank regulators
have a cooling off period, how
can the just former
Comptroller joint a fintech,
an industry he and his
successor worked and work to
get into the national banking
world?
As to now
Acting Comptroller Brian
Brooks, Bloomberg reports that
"[a]s Coinbase’s chief legal
officer, Brooks was paid $1.4
million in salary -- separate
from the stock options -- in
the year and a half he spent
with company, which had
weighed seeking a charter
through the OCC before making
other moves to access the
banking system. He also
received $1.5 million in the
past two years from Fannie
Mae, where he was a board
member after having been the
company’s top lawyer.
Brooks traded those lucrative
posts to earn less than
$300,000 a year running the
OCC. But he still has stock
and bond holdings between $1
million and $2.2 million.
Also, OCC chiefs are among
high-ranking government
officials who often move on to
high-paying positions after
their time in the
government. Because he’s
acting comptroller -- not yet
nominated by President Donald
Trump to seek Senate
confirmation -- he’s not
required to take the ethics
pledge that would limit his
ability to work in lobbying
after he leaves the job,
according to an OCC spokesman.
However, Brooks has submitted
a letter through the agency’s
ethics office outlining
companies he’ll steer clear of
because of potential conflicts
of interest, including
Amazon.com Inc., Bank of
America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch
unit, Coinbase and a number of
other tech firms he’s worked
with.... Otting, who
left the job last month,
wasn’t out of work long. He
was tapped this week to join
the board of Black Knight
Inc., which provides software
for the mortgage industry."
Bloomberg did not delve into
that conflict of interest. And
what are the "other tech
firms" as to which Brooks is
ackowledging a conflict? Watch
this site.
It
has not only been a policy
dispute. Under Otting, the OCC
immediately started denying
Freedom of Information Act fee
waivers, even for copies of
pending merger applications
subject to public comment. He
debased certain longtime OCC
staff, or perhaps they had
alwasy been ready to take this
turn. Time will tell.
Otting started
refusing to consider timely
comments on mergers, such as
the take-over of Chinatown FSB
by a national bank. Such
contempt for the public and
the public process is Otting's
legacy.
What will
change under Otting's
successor Brian P. Brooks?
Brooks was vice chair of
OneWest, before going to
FannieMae then CoinBase, which
he left only in March. Inner
City Press has heard a number
of things about Brooks, but as
always goes into it with an
open mind. Watch this site -
and this project:
Amid the COVID-19
pandemic, fair lending and
Community Reinvestment Act are
taking a back seat, or worse.
While Otting
pushed forward with his
proposal to weaken the CRA,
his new chief national bank
examiner Blake Paulson,
installed just before Otting
left, said bank examinations
have gone 95% off-site.
Fintechs and other non-bank
financial firms are now at the
PPP trough and are getting
sued. For example, there is
the lawsuit filed as a class
action against Fountainhead
Commercial Capital LLC on May
6, noting the finance firm
advertised that it would
process loan requests on a
first-come, first-served basis
and then stealthly shuffled
its line of PPP applicants so
that it would lock down the
largest lending fees first.
Meanwhile the OCC, which wants
to admit fintechs into banking
without regulation, says no
one is in PPP for the money.
This while in response to
Inner City Press' FOIA request
for Otting's schedule the OCC
redacted the names of banks
that he met without, and
obscured others. (A FOIA
appeal has been filed.)
Amid
all this, Fair Finance Watch
and Inner City Press /
Community on the Move are
launching a new project. And
so far, Otting's national
banks have been among the
worst. Watch this site.
***
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