Banking and Credit

Banking and Credit

Since the Great Depression, Congress has passed a series of laws to preserve stability in the banking and credit industries, protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices and make affordable credit available to middle class and low-income families and small businesses.  Beginning in the 1980s, the deregulation of financial institutions has fed speculative booms and devastating busts. Privatization of low-cost government credit for student loans and mortgages and weaker consumer protections has driven up the cost of credit and put consumers at risk.

Commentary

Information is power… and that’s the problem

May 02, 2012

Why #OccupyWallStreet?

October 07, 2011

The Truth in Lending Act, 1968: Don't Confuse People With Information

May 18, 2011
Debt burden

Credit Card Sharks Crying Wolf

May 20, 2009

Cry Wolf Quotes

If you compare what the card industry looked like 20 years ago to how it looks today, you’ll be astonished at how much better a deal consumers are lately getting. And government regulation isn’t what drove the improvement; free-market innovation and competition, did. Twenty years ago, all consumers paid the same interest rate—and it wasn’t low (19.8%).

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Thomas Brown, financial columnist, Bankstocks.com.

The Community Reinvestment Act does not appear to have had any positive effect on lending to residents of LMI neighborhoods. In fact, it appears to have had a negative effect on CRA lenders and LMI residents alike… While both CRA- and non-CRA lenders have increased the number of loans to low-income borrowers, the financial soundness of CRA-covered institutions decreases the better they conform to the CRA.

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Michelle Minton, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Because the Community Reinvestment Act is really kind of a Cloward and Piven kind of scheme that really led to all of the things that, well, we're now having to bail banks out for.

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Glenn Beck, Fox News.

CRA has enabled special interest groups to collect billions of dollars from banks under agreements that are kept secret. Even the citizens that these groups purport to represent have no way of knowing how the groups spend the money they get from banks. That s why I hope the Senate will approve a sunshine amendment that will add accountability to this process and bring these agreements into, the light of day.

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Senator Phil Gramm , Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Evidence

Backgrounders & Briefs

A Timeline of the CARD Act

An interactive timeline of credit card reform.

Resources

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition works against unfair lending and banking practices, particularly those targeted towards low and middle income families.