James Pethokoukis, US News and World Report:
There has been a lot of push back against the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act nudged banks to give mortgages to people who should have not gotten them. But then here comes this fantastic story, courtesy of the Boston Business Journal, about East Bridgewater Savings in Boston:
Bad or delinquent loans? Zero. Foreclosures? None. Money set aside in 2008 for anticipated loan losses? Nothing. … The bank even squeaked out a profit of $87,000. And its Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio was 31.6 percent, or more than three times higher than many community banks in Massachusetts. “We’re paranoid about credit quality,†Petrucelli said. The 62-year-old chief executive has run the bank since 1992.
Yet the FDIC has turned up the heat on Petrucelli’s bank, giving it an apparently rare “needs to improve rating,” for not making more risky loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. Here is how the FDIC puts it: “There are no apparent financial or legal impediments that would limit the bank’s ability to help meet the credit needs of its assessment area. The FDIC examiners also faulted East Bridgewater “for not advertising and marketing its loan products enough. The bank, which does not have a Web site, offers fixed-rate mortgages.”
Me: How many East Bridgewaters are out there that knuckled under to the pressure and started handing out mortgages to whomever? I am not saying that CRA is the only factor here. There is plenty of blame to go around, regulators, Alan Greenspan, derivatives desks on Wall Street. But to let CRA and its enablers off the hook is ridiculous.
[my emphasis]
This is not about equal opportunity lending based on race, as enablers of this governmental-backed coup of private lending would have us believe. Instead, it is about prudent business practice, wherein race is incidental; and if it so happens that particular groups as an aggregate of individuals fail to meet certain credit requirements, why should lenders be forced to give out loans based on group affiliation rather than based on a record of individual industriousness?
None of which is to say private lenders can’t (or shouldn’t) hand out marginally risky loans; rather, it is to say that it is up to them to decide whether they should, and to whom they give them to.
To punish a bank for its conservative practices is to punish it for prudence in regard to its own interests and assets.
And now we’re all paying for the same kind of “social justice” debacles that the government is still insisting those who managed to whether the storm by making good business decisions must by force engage in.
Up is down. Black is white. Laverne is Shirley…
That’s what “social justice” IS, Jeff. We all pay, community activists-cum-politicians slap one another on the back for their feelingness, everything goes to shit, and when a crisis inevitably results the community activists-cum-politicans use it as an excuse to go on a war footing, and . . . well, we all pay. Rinse. Repeat.
Oh, this is just a friendly pat. If the Feds wanted to screw with a holdout bank, they were perfectly capable of denying it the ability to merge with or buy out other institutions for failure to toe the line. Not to mention the ACORN thugs who had a habit of having nasty race-baiting protests in the lobbies…
“The FDIC examiners also faulted East Bridgewater “for not advertising and marketing its loan products enough. The bank, which does not have a Web site, offers fixed-rate mortgages.â€
WTF? The FDIC decides your advertising and marketing plans now? NOT having a website is a reason for being tagged with a “needs to improve” rating? @#$&ing thugs should go mind the damned banks that are hemmoraging red ink.
Particularly when one of its “enablers” who sued Citi back in ’94 over the lack of minority home loans in a certain area of Chicago is sitting in the White House.
Huh! I lived in Bridgewater, MA when I was first married (back around the Wholly Mammoth era.) My brother lived in West Bridgewater and is on the board of directors of a local chain of savings banks in the same county. His bank is doing fairly well because they don’t engage in overly speculative loans. I’ll have to ask him whether or not he’s has run across the CRA and any FDIC interference.
That said, the idea that banks need to be told by the government to make risky loans for “The Sake of the Community” is asinine. However, it certainly fits in the direction we are going, where politicians pass a bill to invest in a company like AIG, guarantee executive bonuses in the bill and then talk about passing a targeted tax on just that company to recover said “protected” bonuses.
Laverne ain’t Shirley, Jeff. Laverne is a three headed Death Hound with rabies.
“…talk about passing a targeted tax on just that company to recover said “protected†bonuses.”
Is that not a Bill of Attainder?
Only if you consider being taxed a punishment. Which, a 100% tax, I certainly would.
Oh, Jeff, this is so retro. People’s own judgments are so passe.
And when the man dances, certainly boys, what else?
The piper pays him.
Well that involves Barney Frank and everyone knows a congressman of his stature and speech impediment could not be responsible for the housing crisis.
Because he only intended to help the poor. And when you are a liberal, if your intent is of that nature then you can fuck anything up and blame it on Republicans and other people. Don’t bring up the fact that his old boyfriend ended up working for Fanny-Freddie.
Government intervention is a disease masquerading as its own cure.
Huh. I wonder if my little local bank is getting the same sort of s*t from the Feds. I’ll have to ask Leon.
Yup, it’s nice to know the guy who manages your mortgage by his first name.
Maybe if more people could do that, this sort of s*t couldn’t happen as easily. Repeal interstate banking!
Regards,
Ric
Mind Boggling…
The bank has 1/3 capita ratio, and has had to write off no bad loans or foreclosures…
But they didn’t make enough risky loans or have a web site, so their FDIC rating is poor..?
Give me a break, that’s like saying Monica Conyers is not a racist twit, or that Jesse the J and Rev Al are not professional race baiters…; or that Rev Wright and his pal Farakhan luvs them some Jooooooos!…
We are truly living in Orwellian times…
That is not part of the “living constitution™”.
But we were all assured by various trolls that the CRA couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this problem!!!!!eleventy!!!!
I’m not holding my breath waiting for the apology….
They won’t apologize, SDN, because they still don’t believe it.
(Madison) Federalist 44, on attainder and ex-post-facto laws:
Damn, Sdferr, it’s almost as if they thought things through when they wrote the Constitution.
I was a banker for 25 years, and I can tell you with great certainty that the CRA – in addition to costing every bank another full salaried officer who did nothing but CRA compliance – very specifically required lowering lending standards for race-based loan compliance.
If you had non-whites living within your delineated CRA radius, and your documented loan approval rate to those non-whites was lower than to whites, it didn’t matter how much effort, marketing, outreach, blah-blah-blah that you did, you would be found to be in violation of the ACT, and criticized. The same applies to mortgage and home equity loans based on median home prices and household incomes.
Someone please tell me why Dodd and Frank are not in stocks on the Mall, being spit upon and whipped.
Odd that, Rob.
Now bringing some (Hamilton) Federalist 84:
“But to let CRA and its enablers off the hook is ridiculous.”
Sorry to tell you this but – They are who we thought they were and we let them off the hook!
Please, please, puhleeze!
Chris Dodd’s intent is so clear here too.
Hey wait, Chris Dodd has a Quiet Man Cottage on the West Coast of Ireland and it’s St. Paddy’s Day! Have a beer (or about 15 or so) and forget about all this AIG nonsense.
We didn’t just let them off the hook, we elected one of their agitators President.
Re: 17 and 20.
You can see how the left views these as a manual. Every tyranny inveighed against is seen as a another thing to add to their “to do” list.
“WTF? The FDIC decides your advertising and marketing plans now?”
Bing. This goes back to Carter. We were dealing with this same shit through Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton only made it worse, and Bush 43. FDIC must be like State – irredeemably leftist no matter who controls the administration.
Normally, the conservative argument — and a correct one at that — against legislation which causes costs to business is that it reduces the availability and raises the price of the goods the business provides. So in this cause, if the CRA does cause riskier loans to be made, then you’d expect that this would cause credit prices to go up as banks recouped those losses elsewhere. You’d also expect less entry into the market for banks as this market is made less profitable. Both would lead to a credit crunch. But what we had was a credit boom.
But here we find it useful to argue that a law that makes credit rarer and more expensive actually caused easy cheap credit.
How dare they not have a website. You’d think the gubmint controlled the vertical AND the horizontal
7
Not a true market of buyers and sellers because one end was being manipulated by a third party, the government. What do you get when you subsidize something? And let’s face it, the government was subsidizing debt.
“FDIC must be like State – irredeemably leftist no matter who controls the administration.”
This is Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. In any organization, there are two kinds of people: Those who work for the stated goals for which the organization was created, and those who work to expand their own power. The latter sort naturally rises to dominate the organization.
(Madison) Federalist 44, on attainder and ex-post-facto laws:
Bills of attainder, ex-post-facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.
Fuck legislation then, I guess I will have to use an Executive Order.
Laverne is Shirley? Does that mean that Squiggy is Lenny? I hope not. I don’t think I could handle that.
Ah, meya. Your argument is spot-on, as usual. The only way I can think of for such a regulatory scheme to increase the supply of credit is if there was a third party available who would buy up these mortgages, thus replenishing the lenders’ capital supply and allowing them to offer ever more credit.
Of course, such third parties don’t exist.
The only way I can think of for such a regulatory scheme to increase the supply of credit is if there was a third party available who would buy up these mortgages, thus replenishing the lenders’ capital supply and allowing them to offer ever more credit.
Of course, such third parties don’t exist.
You mean like actually reward banks for making more and more risky loans? Why that would be just crazy!
meya, you would even be right, except for two things: one, as squid points out, the government was actually underwriting those loans, and two, if you can’t have standards for everyone, you can’t have them for anyone.
After all, the banker isn’t allowed to ask the questions of any of his clients, lest one of them be a member of the Native American Victim Group (see Churchill, Ward). Remember, they extended this not to just obvious minorities, but also to gays, differently abled, etc.
Laverne ain’t Shirley, but I think Squiggy dated Barney Frank.
“The only way I can think of for such a regulatory scheme to increase the supply of credit is if there was a third party available who would buy up these mortgages, thus replenishing the lenders’ capital supply and allowing them to offer ever more credit.”
Then the blame is on the third party giving easy credit. Though that doesn’t seem to have guaranteed the profitability of loose credit.
But the effect of the CRA — if we are to apply conservative critiques of cost-raising regulations — is to clamp down on credit booms, not facilitate them.
I see that meya is removing the junk from its sphincter again …
If repeating a lie 1,000 times doesn’t make it the truth, the wingnuts will try it 10,000 times.
Once and for all: CRA did not force banks or mortgage companies to make loans to people who couldn’t repay them.
At least Pethokoukis limits himself to talking about the housing crisis.
This simple-minded desperation to blame anything and everything wrong on their political opponents is juvenile, and shamelessly dishonest.
Some facts:
– All subprime mortgages total only about $600 Billion
– Subprime ARMs only represent 6.8% of all U.S. mortgages
– The totally unregulated derivatives market is now well over $600 TRILLION, or about four times the total wealth of the entire world. Credit default swaps alone account for over $40 TRILLION.
Only your thoughts operate in a vacuum, meya. The world of finance does not.
No shit, sashal.
sashal: See here. You are totally wrong about CRA but right about derivatives. However the two are connected in some way. Think it through.
And no the CRA is not the only reason for the credit crisis and arguing that would be stupid. However, it is equally moronic to argue that it played no role in the crisis. 14 years of FDIC pressuring banks to make riskier and riskier loans to low income applicants had some effect, an effect that was already being seen at Freddie and Fannie as early as 2003 & 2004 when Republicans suggested that the Treasury Department take over day to day operations of both. That move was blocked by … wait for it … Frank, Shumer and Dodd, with indignant cries of “racist” and “GOP hates them some poor people!” This does not in any wayabsolve the spineless Republicans who refused to do the right thing and start cleaning up this mess back then.
Feel free to mock those who blame this current crisis on CRA but don’t paint yourself as a fool by insisting that it had little effect.
The East Bridgewater Savings Bank is not a Boston bank. It’s a nice little solvent bank with several branches in the south-of-Boston suburban area with its home office in (surprise) East Bridgewater MA. It operates under sound business and banking practices and protects its investors so naturally it displeases the moonbats at the FDIC.
Matt Currie: I knew that if some other didn’t.
My brother of the similar regional savings bank informs me that they have an excellent rating with the FDIC even though they do very few loans of the CRA variety. The way around is to loan money and make charitable donations to non-profits, including local and national home building organizations. Those count against the “Community Reinvestment” portion of the act.
CRA is not to blame…as much as you want it to be. Your anecdote is not sufficient data to make such a claim. It took about 2 minutes on the Google to find this:
http://traigerlaw.com/publications/The_community_reinvestment_act_of_1977-not_guilty_1-26-09.pdf
Read the detailed report refuting this anecdotal claim, if you’re interested in data. If not, then continue to pig fight based on your “gut” feelings about rich v. poor people and government regulation.
“We’re paranoid about credit quality,â€
The CRA was passed under Carter, largely ignored, and then given more teeth under Clinton in 1995.
I’d say there are many ACORN like organizations since 1995 that have sprung up and been holding lending institutions’ feet to the fire to make available those 105% loans to individuals with no (zip, zilch, nada) credit worthiness.
Pathetic, all of it.
Alleen: The CRA was a contributing factor in the overall mortgage/real estate/credit crisis. The fact that, after companies went wacky throwing out mortgages to unworthy borrowers wholly dependent upon the continued, unsustainable rise in real estate values, the FDIC is still leaning on banks to make “Community Investments” strikes one as counterproductive.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the study but do note that the law firm who produced it had a rather large stake in the continuation of the program. Others have disagreed with the idea that the CRA played virtually no part in this.
We can, however, agree that CRA loans played a rather large part in the decline of the two Macs. Of that there is virtually no doubt, based upon the data.