By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
FEDERAL COURT / S Bronx, Jan 31 – Whether or not the U.S. Community Reinvestment Act will be again enforced until the new Administration and its regulators is an open questions.
On the 10th day of the new Administration, Fair Finance Watch with Inner City Press on the FOIA filed comments with the post-Brooks Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and with the Federal Reserve on a proposal by VeraBank of Texas to acquire Panola National Bank.
The issues include that the applicant VeraBank in Texas in 2019 made 465 home loans to whites and only NINE to African Americans. Its denial rate for African Americans was more than FOUR TIMES than for whites.
That is to say, VeraBank in Texas in 2019 made 3.7 loans to whites for each denial to whites. It made less than one - 0.81 - loans to African Americans for every denial to African Americans.
There is also this: "'In the second round we have seen about half the number of requests that we did in the first round,' said Brad Tidwell, president and CEO of Henderson-based VeraBank."
To the OCC, the rubber-stamping of mergers by redliners under Brian Brooks and Joseph Otting has been explicitly noted. To the Fed, its logic in extending a recent comment period due to Coronavirus must apply to this and other applications. These are litmus tests. Watch this site.
Meanwhile in Federal court, PNC Bank and its Midland Loan Services have been sued for usury, predatory lending and civil conspiracy, under New York and Federal law.
The complaint docketed on December 29, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which Inner City Press covers, describes PNC's lending on a number of homes and allegedly racking up $250 charges.
It questions the reporting on line 205 of the HUD statement. When the plaintiff questioned it, he was called an "assh*ole."
The case is filed while PNC seeks to buy the US retail banking business of BBVA for $16 billion, an application to the Federal Reserve Board and other regulators which is subject to the Community Reinvestment Act.
The case is Barli v. PNC Bank, NA et al., 20-cv-11027 (Castel)
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