What is the Center for Responsible Lending?
March 12, 2010 | Center for Responsible Lending, federal legislation, industry | Comments (0)Big Government.com is taking a look in the must-read of the day:
The Center is headed by liberal crusader Martin Eakes. In 2008 Politico referred to Eakes as the “main intellectual engine driving Democratic responses to the housing crisis.”
The Center’s primary benefactors over the years have been the subprime mortgage speculators Herb and Marion Sandler who have given the nonprofit at least $20 million.
Unlike higher profile high-dollar liberal donors such as George Soros and insurance tycoon Peter B. Lewis (his company is called Progressive for a reason), the Sandlers have received very little media attention. They shelled out $13 million to left-wing groups in a failed effort to prevent President Bush’s reelection in 2004. This made them the third most generous donors in 2004 behind Soros ($27 million) and Lewis ($23 million).
The Sandlers have also given sizeable chunks of cash to the highly influential Center for American Progress, the liberal “action” tank run by Obama transition co-chief John Podesta. Incidentally, Podesta’s outfit recently put disgraced former green jobs czar Van Jones on the payroll. Jones is the self-described revolutionary communist forced from office last year when it was discovered that he was a 9/11 truther:
Center for Responsible Lending unhappy
January 15, 2010 | Center for Responsible Lending, federal legislation, industry | Comments (1)It’s amazing how there is an inverse relationship to CRL’s happiness and mine. From today’s American Banker:
Mike Calhoun, the president of the Center for Responsible Lending, agreed. “We are skeptical that there is any structure other than a free-standing agency where the consumer regulator is not pressured by the same interests that produced the crisis that we are still trying to get out of.”
This is rich
January 15, 2010 | Center for Responsible Lending, alternatives, customers, federal legislation, industry | Comments (0)The Justice Department is investigating banks and mortgage lenders that discriminate against minorities. From today’s New York Times:
The Justice Department is beginning a major campaign against banks and mortgage brokers suspected of discriminating against minority applicants in lending, opening a new front in the Obama administration’s response to the foreclosure crisis.
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“They encourage lenders to make risky loans for reasons such as diversity, and then when lenders have a problem because they made too many risky loans, they condemn them for that,” said Ernest Istook, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma.
And I would add, if you don’t discriminate in any respect, such as payday lenders, you are criticized for “targeting.”
Note that a lawyer from the Center for Responsible Lending has been hired by the Justice Department to pursue this investigation.
Never enough
November 16, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending | Comments (0)There is no compromise with the Center for Responsible Lending. From their latest news release:
Statement of Eric Halperin, director of the Washington D.C. office of the Center for Responsible Lending:
“The Federal Reserve Board’s action today on debit card overdraft fees legitimizes an abusive product without providing any substantive protections for bank customers. We appreciate that the Fed chose to implement the strongest overdraft reform rule it was considering, namely requiring banks and credit unions to ask new and existing customers before charging overdraft fees on debit card transactions. But this improvement is undermined by the Fed’s failure to propose or enact necessary safeguards against a host of unfair practices.
They will not be happy until no one makes any money providing financial services to working people.
Center for LESS Responsible Lending
November 11, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, industry, positive media coverage | Comments (0)I know I said I wouldn’t blog today, but couldn’t resist this one. The website Big Government takes on Center for Responsible Lending:
The Center for Responsible Lending is part of a giant web of financial institutions that make cheap loans (and act like loan sharks as they sue their customers over loans as small as $96) — all while smearing the reputation of customers and lobbying to restrict competing financial products. (Click here to learn more.) For what it’s worth, the Consumers Rights League, a watchdog group, has filed a massive IRS complaint alleging:
- The totality of the Center’s activities seems to constitute lobbying in violation of their tax-exempt status.
- The Center receives the vast majority of their revenue from only two donors—both of whom have potentially made billions of dollars as a result of the Center’s lobbying activities.
- The Center may have attempted to hide the role of major donors who stood to benefit from the Center’s lobbying activities by failing to file disclosures required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act.
- The Center may have attempted to mask the extent of their lobbying by illegally combining entities on reports and improperly or outright failing to report lobbying expenditures and activities.
- The Center has reported significantly fewer lobbying expenditures to the IRS than to Congress in what seems to be an attempt to camouflage lobbying expenditures that exceed the allowable amounts for tax-exempt 501c3 organizations.
Huffington Post covers CRL scandal
October 20, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, industry | Comments (0)From the Huffington Post:
The Consumer Rights League asked the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate to investigate whether the Center for Responsible Lending and its parent organization, the Center for Community Self-Help, violated lobbying rules by not properly disclosing lobbying activities. And the league asked the IRS whether the center ought to lose its tax-exempt nonprofit status because of the amount of lobbying it does.
The Center for Responsible Lending admitted to Roll Call that it was late in filing reports on political contributions. And, the paper reported, the “center and two employees filed their 2009 midyear report after Roll Call notified it of the complaint.”
CRL’s latest release
October 6, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, alternatives, industry | Comments (1)Just hit the wires:
Banks and credit unions collected nearly $24 billion in overdraft fees last year, an increase of 35 percent from just two years earlier, a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending shows. [See the full report at
The explosion in overdraft charges has drained the wallet of as many as 51 million Americans whose accounts become overdrawn annually. It is particularly harmful to financially vulnerable families already hit hard by the recession.
“Banks and credit unions have become so sophisticated in driving up overdrafts that Americans now pay more in overdraft fees every year than they do for books, cereal, or fresh vegetables,” said CRL senior researcher Leslie Parrish. “These billions of dollars drained from consumers each year represent lost opportunities for families to save for a rainy day or buy necessary goods and services that could help spark the economy.”
The most common trigger of overdraft fees are small debit card transactions that could easily be denied for no fee. This is how things used to work, and according to a 2008 nationally representative survey, it’s what the large majority of people prefer.
Spoon fed
September 30, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, Wisconsin, industry | Comments (0)Wisconson Rep. Gordon Hintz sounds like he’s been spoon fed by Center for Responsible Lending. From his guest piece today in the Appleton Post Crescent:
A two-week loan of $200 rolled over four times costs an additional $200 for a 10-week period. The average number of rollover loans in a year is 13, although the industry would have you believe that each loan is an independent transaction.
The industry would have you believe? The data collection agency that reviews payday lending frequency in other states, says CRL has misused its data by implying that each new loan is a “rollover” and not a new independent transaction. Rep. Hintz, you are being misled,
Where’s the news?
September 24, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, federal legislation | Comments (0)Traditionally, news releases need to contain news. The Center for Responsible Lending, though, thinks the world awaits its every predictable opinion. They should have headlined this release, “Yada, yada, yada.”
Repost
September 22, 2009 | ACORN, Center for Responsible Lending | Comments (0)ACORN & Center for Responsible Lending: Subprime Culprits
For those of you who don’t know, ACORN is a consumer group that began after the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) became official in 1977. Their stated goal since the beginning has been to combat redlining. However, what they have achieved over the years is to effectively convince lenders to relax their standards so that they can serve people with poor credit and little or no assets. According to the Wall Street Journal, ACORN and the CRA “laid the foundation for the house of cards built out of subprime loans.”
During the recent presidential election, an organization called the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) grabbed more than its share of the headlines. Specifically, there have been allegations that ACORN has been involved in large-scale voter fraud (and here’s a road map). But let’s focus on some of their even more prominent activities, and how they have had close ties with Self-Help Credit Union and the Center For Responsible Lending (CRL). It could easily be said that ACORN and the CRL have sided against the American taxpayer since day one.
