While the subprime loans were flowing, communities of color had access to a seemingly endless amount of funding. In 1990, one million refinance loans were issued. It was the same for home improvement and refinance loans. By 2003, 15 million refinance loans were issued. That directly contributed to billions in loss equity, especially among minority and elderly homeowners. Also at the same time, banks developed “emerging markets” divisions that specifically targeted under-served communities of color. In 2003, subprime loans were more prevalent among blacks in 98.5 percent of metropolitan areas, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
One former Wells Fargo loan officer testifying in a lawsuit filed by the city of Baltimore against the bank says fellow employers routinely referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans” and black people as “mud people.” He says he was reprimanded for not pushing higher priced loans to black borrowers who qualified for prime or cheaper loans. Another loan officer, Beth Jacobson, says the black community was seen “as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania.”
“We just went right after them,” Jacobson said, according to the New York Times, adding that the black church was frequently targeted as the bank believed church leaders could convince their congregations to take out loans. There are numerous reports throughout the nation of black church leaders being paid incentives for drumming up business.
Due in part to these aggressive marketing techniques and ballooning emerging market divisions, subprime mortgage activity grew an average of 25 percent per year from 1994 to 2003, drastically outpacing the growth for prime mortgages. In 2003, subprime loans made up 9 percent of all U.S. mortgages, about a $330 billion business; up from $35 billion a decade earlier.
Now that the subprime market has imploded, banks have all but abandoned those communities. Prime lending in communities of color has decreased 60 percent while prime lending in white areas has fallen 28.4 percent.
Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148068
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The Big Repug/Conservative Lie is the (Dems/socialist/hated) CRA, by some miraculous power now evaporated, "forced" the lenders to make sup-prime loans.
For some mysterious reason, those same (predatory) lenders cannot be "forced" to modify those loans to allow people to keep their homes.
As always, the Repug Big Lie is smokescreen for the crimes by Repug financiers. Like Repugs blaming the entire planet's woes on govt, when in fact the perps are corporations that pay the govt piper that plays the perps' tunes.
I used to believe that banks would take your money 7 days a week if you let them..not so anymore...I make a healthy income and recently financed a thousand dollars worth of furniture at a low interest rate...I made my payments every month and paid off the balance quickly.....the credit company canceled my credit line...I was gonna buy a new plasma but now I will wait till I can use cash instead...the banks don't want you if you make your payments! they are undermining our economy...
The big banks total make $12B/profits.
From exorbitant, punitive, and often"backdated/frontloaded" processing, overdraft charges, they make $38B/year.
Without overdraft penalties, they're bankrupt.
The financial reform bill limited some of these fees, rates, penalties, but on consumer cards only.
To escape/gut the financial reform limits, the cc issuers have shipped out millions of non-solicited, non-regulated business cc's to consumers.
Paranoia is when you imagine threats and dangers that don't exist. It's not paranoia when you think the financial sector is out to you hard.
Didn't Wells Fargo just get their asses sued off for the front loading issue?
Hope there's more to come.
If all that is a lie, then why is it when republicans tried to fix this issue in 2003, democrats like Barney frank and the power they wield were able to stop reform?
Did the Republicans try to reform the derivatives market?
The Repugs tried to fix the CRA in 2003? It needed fixin?
The Repugs blocked 19 states (including Spitzer who chased Greenberg out of AIG) attempt to stop predatory lending. The Repugs LIKED how the finance sector was screwing people out of $Ts.
Greenberg's Wall St buddies got dubya's corrupt DoJ to take down Spitzer.
I don't believe you. can you back that up?
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