| On Day Otting Out of OCC
Legacy of Contempt For CRA Public Process and
FOIA Brooks Next
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE / SDNY
COURT, May 29 – Today is 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.
We have
only two words: Good riddance.
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.
***
Your
support means a lot. As little as $5 a month
helps keep us going and grants you access to
exclusive bonus material on our Patreon
page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
SDNY Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA
Past
& future at UN: Room S-303, UN,
NY 10017 USA
Mail: Box 20047, Dag
Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2020 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com
|
,
