SOUTH BRONX / DC, April 2 – Before Capital One announced and applied to buy Discover, they and their law firm were allowed to meet secretly with the Federal Reserve, see below.
After they applied late March 20, 2024 Inner City Press submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Fed. While they granted expedited treatment, they delayed nearly a near before on March 4, 2025 dumping over 1000 redacted pages.
On March 28 the Fed has announced that "the federal bank regulatory agencies today announced, in light of pending litigation, their intent to issue a proposal to both rescind the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) final rule issued in October 2023 and reinstate the CRA framework that existed prior."
On March 31 the CFPB cut back on how HMDA data is provided; on April 2 Fair Finance Watch petitioned the Fed "to take emergency measures to ensure public access to simply analyzable data under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), including the 2024 data. Until now - for 2023 and before - CFPB has provided a filtering page for HMDA data, searchable by geography and applicant characteristics.
On March 31 the CFPB rather than adding 2024 data to the filtering site linked above put up only modified LARS by institution and a large raw data date for which it provided a warning.
The effect of this is to make it significantly more difficult for community groups to analyze and compare lenders' HMDA data. The FRB should put a simple collating / analyzing web interface with the 2024 up forthwith.
The Fed's late-provided FOIA documents begin with ex parte meetings between the bank, its law firm and the Fed - telephone calls in February 2024, and a meeting inside the Fed on March 7, 2024 (the Fed waited until March 4, 2025 to disclose this). 1000 page on Inner City Press' DocumentCloud here. 200+ more pages here. FOIA determination letter here
Inner City Press has filed a FOIA appeal to the Federal Reserve - and raised it in a March 21 comments, along with a new Bank for International Settlements study that cries out for denial of the merger.
On March 24, the Fed's response: "Because your letter was received after the end of the public comment period, it will not be made a part of the record of this case unless the Board in its sole discretion determines to consider your late comments." Yeah, discretion...
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