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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - The Source
SOUTH BRONX, SDNY, Nov 4 – In the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic and after the insurrection, then-Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks on January 13, 2021 gave another quid pro quo gift, a bank charter to Anchorage, even as he quit with a week left in the Administration. Inner City Press asked, Where might he land and get rewarded for all this?
In March we learned: Brooks "joined blockchain credit startup Spring Labs as its first independent director, the Marina Del Rey, California-based fintech bragged."
But it didn't last long. Now in November, this: "Former top U.S. banking regulator Brian Brooks has been named CEO of bitcoin miner Bitfury, roughly three months after abruptly quitting as chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.US" Revolting revolving door.
Brooks' rushed “fake lender” rule took effect in December and was issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The rule protects “rent-a-bank” schemes whereby predatory lenders (the true lender) launder their loans through a few rogue banks (the fake lender), which are exempt from state interest rate caps. The rule overrides 200 years’ worth of caselaw allowing courts to see through usury law evasions to the truth, and replaces it with a pro-evasion rule that looks only at the fine print on the loan agreement.
On May 11 in the Senate, the fake lender rule was overruled under the Congressional Review Act, by a vote of 52 to 47, which ran nearly to 7 pm.
See Fair Finance Watch tweets here.
Inner City Press has since then reported on, and questioned, the nominiation of Saule Omarova, who has virtually no track record on the Community Reinvestment Act. Despite other questions, the Administration has doubled down and formalized the nomination. The word on the Hill is it's time to find out more about who Hsu is. Watch this site.
Watch this site.
Meanwhile Inner City Press' requests under the Freedom of Information Act into Brooks' conflicts of interest in the fintech and crypto-currency world have yet to be fully answered. Will Brooks be taking "his" documents with him?
Brooks went whole hog with Anchorage, the so-called first crypto bank. It should be reversed - but will it be? Anchorage was represented by Dana Syracuse through the revolving door from the NYS Department of Financial Services.
Fair Finance Watch and others opposed and requested extensions on Figure, for which OCC has yet to answer Inner City Press' FOIA request, here
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