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As Subprime Lending Crisis Unfolded, Watchdog Fed Didn't Bother Barking
Washington Post ^ | Binyamin Appelbaum

Posted on 09/26/2009 10:00:22 PM PDT by Lorianne

The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to warn about the growing prevalence of abusive mortgage lending.

They began to present research in 1999 showing that large banking companies including Wells Fargo and Citigroup had created subprime businesses wholly focused on making loans at high interest rates, largely in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown Chicago.

The groups pleaded for regulators to act.

The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses.

But during the years of the housing boom, the pleas failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses. Under a policy quietly formalized in 1998, the Fed refused to police lenders' compliance with federal laws protecting borrowers, despite repeated urging by consumer advocates across the country and even by other government agencies.

The hands-off policy, which the Fed reversed earlier this month, created a double standard. Banks and their subprime affiliates made loans under the same laws, but only the banks faced regular federal scrutiny. Under the policy, the Fed did not even investigate consumer complaints against the affiliates.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government
KEYWORDS: fed; mortgage; subprime
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To: thouworm

Great research and tying all of this together. I had heard about the lawsuit where Obama was one of the lawyers but this is the first time I have seen it laid out with the others to connect the dots.

This is getting more interesting by the day!

Thanks for posting this!


21 posted on 09/27/2009 9:07:21 AM PDT by PhiKapMom (Mary Fallin - OK Gov/Coburn - Senate 2010 ! Take Back the House/Senate! Stop ZERO!)
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To: Trailerpark Badass

Thank you. I loved it. Here are some excerpts:

It was crippled by the doubts of senior officials about the value of regulation, by a tendency to discount anecdotal evidence of problems and by its affinity for the financial industry.

The Fed’s reluctance was part of a broad governmental retreat from oversight of the financial industry. Greenspan and many politicians in both parties saw regulation as a blunt instrument that often deprived more people than it protected.

Like I been saying, this “gov’t shouldn’t do anything” mentality of the libertarians is stupid and has pretty much gutted the GOP over the last 30 years. Electing a current republican is like putting a neutered bull in the pasture and expecting some calves. It ain’t gonna happen.

parsy, who is disgusted


22 posted on 09/27/2009 9:14:41 AM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: Liz

Thanks for your post and info. This is all beginning to make sense and lends credibility that Obama was going to win this election one way or the other. He had to be put in power so the powers behind him could begin their work to nationalize whole industries like banks, automobile (except Ford would bite), healthcare, energy, etc. All done on a march toward socialism and then communism. This bunch of Marxist never counted on the research that conservatives would be doing to find the answers.


23 posted on 09/27/2009 9:15:31 AM PDT by PhiKapMom (Mary Fallin - OK Gov/Coburn - Senate 2010 ! Take Back the House/Senate! Stop ZERO!)
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To: Lorianne

24 posted on 09/27/2009 9:17:01 AM PDT by The Comedian (Evil can only succeed if good men don't point at it and laugh.)
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To: parsifal
Posted this on another thread: As predictable as the sun rising and setting, this obscene certainty has been known by every insider in Wall Street and every Government official connect to banking.

It was obvious even to me from the time of this earliest chart, and I know next to nothing about finance or macroeconomics.

"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear..... Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts.... "[they] are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."

- Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report [2003]

25 posted on 09/27/2009 9:45:55 AM PDT by thouworm
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To: thouworm

Without Fannie and Freddie buying most of these loans..they would never have been made.


26 posted on 09/27/2009 10:07:41 AM PDT by Oldexpat
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To: thouworm

But this scenario assumes that Wall Street was just making the goiv’t happy, and the better view IMHO, is that gov’t tends to make Wall Street happy. The CRA loans were never more than 3% of loan originations. Wall Street saw a chance to make a bundle with higher fee subprimes. They often threw people with good credit scores into subprime for the higher fees. They then massaged them into AAA paper and made a bundle selling the paper, and taking side on the paper.

I amj still trying to understand the full impact of the derivatives mess. I will send you a really fun link by a Wall Street guy who caught on and made tons of money shorting the crap.

parsy, who notes the big boys are putting more of the derivatives on exchanges now.


27 posted on 09/27/2009 10:47:20 AM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: Liz

Thanks for the ping.


28 posted on 09/27/2009 10:54:08 AM PDT by GOPJ (UN mixing democracies & dictator's like mixing ice cream and shit-all of it stinks.(Steyn))
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To: PhiKapMom

If conservatives find the answers, then you are going to desert the GOP in droves. The GOP has been taken over by LICE (Libertarians Infiltrating Conservative Entities)the last 30 years or so. As such, all regulation is presumed bad and you are in effect sending atheists into to be the pastors of a church.

Libertarianism and conservatism are two different distinct things. They may have a few points in common, but libertarians are basically little kids masquerading as adults with a simplistic little world view (often based on the writings of an idiot named Ayn Rand). You might as well put a bunch of people who believe the world is 6,000 years old into the heads of geology departments.

The libertarians think any form of regulation is socialism, despite the clear intent of the founding fathers that we have a strong national gov’t with the ability to regulate commerce.

parsy, who is fed up with GOP


29 posted on 09/27/2009 10:55:43 AM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: parsifal
I took away a slightly different lesson, that "regulation" is no guarantee of effective enforcement.

"Regulation" seems to mean letting the crooks know exactly whom to bribe.

The actions of Rubin, Paulson, et al. are just too obvious to dismiss.

30 posted on 09/27/2009 11:49:48 AM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (Happiness is a choice!)
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To: PhiKapMom; stephenjohnbanker; GOPJ; hoosiermama; maggief; Just mythoughts; thouworm; FromLori; ...
This bunch of Marxists in our govt never counted on the research that conservatives would be doing to find the answers.

Been contemplating the ways the internet could conquer the world.....and now it's right here....at the tips of our digitized fingers.

They ain't seen nothin' yet.

31 posted on 09/27/2009 12:41:22 PM PDT by Liz
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To: Liz
ACORN and SEIU: Anatomy of a Shakedown

“ACORN’s so-called ‘muscle for money’ strategy extorts ‘donations’ from targeted government and corporate officials by offering them Mafia-like protection from protests by the group’s own paid thugs, many of them convicted felons. ACORN has also blocked bank mergers until the targeted financial institutions agreed to change their lending policies to ACORN’s satisfaction.”

ping

32 posted on 09/27/2009 1:26:19 PM PDT by GOPJ (UN mixing democracies & dictator's like mixing ice cream and shit-all of it stinks.(Steyn))
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To: Liz

Link to above comment...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2349586/posts


33 posted on 09/27/2009 1:27:40 PM PDT by GOPJ (UN mixing democracies & dictator's like mixing ice cream and shit-all of it stinks.(Steyn))
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To: Trailerpark Badass

I agree that regulation often doesn’t work. That is why it would be nice if BOTH political parties concentrated on business for a change.

But, you are forgetting something new. Its called the internet. And now, the average citizens across the country can get together to put heat on Congress to do their jobs.

What if 10,000 freepers read these articles on regulating Wall Street and each email their reps and sens and tell them, “No More of this no regulation crap! You let Wall Street get out of control and you better do something about it now or your name is getting smeared all over the internet as a friggin crony of Wall Street!”

Can you imagine the impact of this coming from a conservative web site? The liberals have been b*tching about Wall Street for years, and the truth is the conservatives have been so durn brain-washed by these moronic libertarians they have lapsed into insanity when it comes to even sensible regulations.

There are still freepers who blame the CRA and poor folks for the meltdown and think the answer to it all is to let Wall Street have even more power.

parsy, who guesses the average republican will have to be reduced to peonage before they catch on


34 posted on 09/27/2009 2:56:11 PM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: parsifal
Sorry. I disagree.

As I said, the government purporting to "regulate" the industry gives it a fake imprimatur of fairness. Far better for the industry to convince each potential customer that they want his business, and will insure fairness to get it.

Lately we've had the worst of both worlds, a veneer of regulation, all while both parties tilt the rules in Wall Street's favor, and incestuous "regulators" asleep at the switch.

Trailerpark badass, who's too old to believe in competent, altruistic, disinterested "public servants"

35 posted on 09/27/2009 6:18:17 PM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (Happiness is a choice!)
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