James Terry, Chief Public Advocate for the Consumers Rights League (CRL), today issued the following statement on an ICBA report that financial institutions that opt out of the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program likely will be named on a public list and be required to notify their customers: James Terry, Chief Public Advocate, Consumers Rights…
The term “predatory lending” seems to have appeared out of thin air in recent years. In reality, the prevalence of the term—and the accompanying public panic—owes much to a sophisticated public relations campaign carried out by the increasingly high-profile Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). As the most visible face of the half-billion dollar team of…
In the past, credit was only available to the very wealthy. Middle and low income families were limited to spend only what was in their paycheck or what they had saved over time. The credit revolution in the latter part of the 20th Century changed this. The democratization of credit has been very good for…
Then Treasury Secretary Paulson arrived on Capitol Hill in September of 2008 with a simple plan and a simple message that went something like “give me $700 billion dollars in the next few days or the world as we know it will end.” Congressional leaders emerged from that meeting and immediately began negotiations. Those negotiations…
Take a tour of the websites for the Center for Responsible Lending and its parent, Self-Help Credit Union Network, and you’ll see a heavy emphasis on the need to expand credit and investment in rural and urban communities that have been underserved by the market. Sounds like a great idea to us. Expanding access to…
Home prices rose steadily and dramatically over the last several years. For the first time in history, the increase in home prices outpaced the increase in inflation. This rapid rise was fueled by low interest rates and an artificially expanded consumer pool as a result of government policies like the Community Reinvestment Act and quota…
The Consumers Rights League (CRL) today released the following the announcement that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has authorized $16 million grant to the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) through the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program. The ACORN family of organizations has a decades-long history of voter fraud, embezzlement, and misuses of taxpayer…
Today, the Consumers Rights League (CRL) published a collection of whistleblower documents that suggest the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has reaped substantial financial gains by misusing taxpayer dollars for political ends and by attacking lending corporations for the same “predatory” lending practices it regularly engages in. The ACORN Housing Association (AHC),…
$1 Million Scandal Latest To Hit ACORN As Evidence Mounts, Congress Must Investigate and Install Taxpayer Protections ACORN and its affiliates have a multi-decade history of fraud and abuse of taxpayer funds. Recently, the Consumers Rights League released a whistleblower report that uses internal ACORN documents to highlight alleged misuses of taxpayer money by ACORN…