Nnanji
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Joined: 3/29/2016 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Phydeaux The affordable housing law required Fannie and Freddie to meet government quotas when they bought loans from banks and other mortgage originators. At first, this quota was 30%; that is, of all the loans they bought, 30% had to be made to people at or below the median income in their communities. HUD, however, was given authority to administer these quotas, and between 1992 and 2007, the quotas were raised from 30% to 50% under Clinton in 2000 and to 55% under Bush in 2007. http://commonsensewonder.blogspot.com/2011/10/remember-janet-reno-threatening-banks.html At President Clinton's direction, no fewer than 10 federal agencies issued a chilling ultimatum to banks and mortgage lenders to ease credit for lower-income minorities or face investigations for lending discrimination and suffer the related adverse publicity. They also were threatened with denial of access to the all-important secondary mortgage market and stiff fines, along with other penalties. The threat was codified in a 20-page "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" and entered into the Federal Register on April 15, 1994, by the Interagency Task Force on Fair Lending. Clinton set up the little-known body to coordinate an unprecedented crackdown on alleged bank redlining. The edict — completely overlooked by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the mainstream media — was signed by then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Attorney General Janet Reno, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, along with the heads of six other financial regulatory agencies. https://www.justice.gov/archive/ag/speeches/1998/0320_agcom.htm UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE - - - REMARKS OF THE HONORABLE JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, TO THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT COALITION But capital alone won't work. You need the people to do it. The Community Reinvestment Act has played a critical part in ensuring that lending institutions put some of their capital into underserved areas, especially the inner cities and in minority neighborhoods. The new Community Reinvestment Act regulations enable lenders to develop customized strategic plans for meeting their obligations under the Act, and many have been developed in partnership with your local organizations. In this way you are not only helping to rebuild your communities, but you are showing bankers how to be responsible corporate citizens. In short, you can't do it just with capital, you can't do it just with people who care; we can do it together. (Applause.) It has been my experience in these five years in office that most bankers want to be good and responsible corporate citizens, or they're willing to be if they're nudged in the right direction by vocal, knowledgeable, constructive groups such as the NCRC members and by Justice Department lawyers who care and want to do the right thing.[/] http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/26/opinion/justice-cracks-down-on-redlining.html The Justice Department dramatically sharpened its attack on discriminatory lending practices this week when it got Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank, the largest in the Washington D.C. area, to agree to set up branches in black neighborhoods. Justice has gone after banks that discriminated against black loan applicants, but until the Chevy Case case it had never used anti-discrimination laws to challenge where banks provided services or placed branches. The new tactic deserves praise. As Attorney General Janet Reno observed, blacks are no better off if a bank shuns their neighborhood than if it rejects their loan applications. The purpose of anti-discrimination laws is to guarantee that qualified blacks have an equal shot at loans. At Chevy Chase they did not. According to Justice, the bank made 97 percent of its loans between 1976 and 1992 in white neighborhoods. It opened no branches where 90 percent of blacks in Washington D.C. live, nor did it open branches where 75 percent of the blacks in Prince George's County, Maryland, live.
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