Greenlining Institute
By Orson Aguilar

Public anger over bank bailouts and fat Wall Street bonuses has put enormous pressure on President Obama to crack down – but a crackdown isn’t enough. It’s time to take positive steps to push our banking system to better serve all of America’s diverse communities.
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California Progress Report
Author: Preeti Vissa & Faith Bautista

Recent reports that financial legerdemain engineered by Goldman Sachs helped destabilize the Greek economy ought to make Californians nervous. It’s time to ask if Goldman could do to us what it appears to have done to the Greeks and, indirectly, to the rest of Europe.
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American Banker
By Orson Aguilar and Earl Skip Cooper 2nd

Though President Obama has told the bankers that his administration is the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks, it remains to be seen whether those considered “too big to fail” will get a free ride. Many community leaders, and the Congressional Black Caucus, are afraid they might.

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(SACRAMENTO) – Statement of Assemblymember Ted W. Lieu (D-Torrance) on proposed Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan changes:

“I commend the Federal Housing Administration for all of their actions to help stabilize the housing market. However, I believe the proposals being considered by FHA to require home buyers to come up with more money for down payments as well as an increase in upfront mortgage insurance payments to qualify for an FHA mortgage is a step in the wrong direction. First, these new qualifications will disproportionately penalize a state like California where housing prices are much higher than the national average. A difference of one and a half points is quite large compared to loans in other states with much lower housing prices. For example, on a $400,000 loan, the current down payment requirement of 3.5 percent would be $14,000. Increasing it to 5 percent would increase the down payment to $20,000, which is a fairly big difference for many people in California. Plus, if you add on an increase in upfront mortgage premiums, you will end up excluding even more Californians from buying homes.

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prnewswire.com

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today released the findings of its FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, breaking new ground in gaining understanding of which Americans remain outside the banking system. The survey, conducted on behalf of the FDIC by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, was a supplement to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey during January 2009. The study, which is the most comprehensive survey to date of the unbanked and underbanked, reveals that more than one quarter (25.6 percent) of all households in the United States are unbanked or underbanked and that those households are disproportionately low-income and/or minority.

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BYLINE: Stacy Kaper

WASHINGTON – The drive to revamp the regulatory system could breathe new life into a long-simmering effort to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act.

Advocates who have long sought to expand and deepen the 32-year-old law that requires banks to serve low- and moderate-income borrowers in the markets where they take deposits argue that the time has come to broaden its application to nonbank lenders and credit unions and to add disclosure requirements.

Though critics of the law, including many Republicans who claim it helped fuel the financial crisis, are expected to remain opposed, most observers said the odds in favor of some kind of action are growing.

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By Len Canty and Orson Aguilar | OW Contributors

With reports that only 9% of eligible loans being modified, families across the country are beginning to lose hope that President Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) will help them remain in their homes.

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The number during the four months that ended March 31 are more than double the amount required in the period under an agreement between the bank and states including California.

L.A. Times
By E. Scott Reckard

Bank of America Corp. says it offered to modify more than 100,000 home loans in a four-month period, more than double the number required under its settlement of accusations of predatory lending that California and other states brought against Countrywide Financial Corp. (more…)

American Banker  |  Wednesday, May 27, 2009

By Orson Aguilar and J. Alfred Smith Jr.

A major transformation in banking is revolutionizing America’s approach to financial literacy.

Some financial institutions, to their credit, such as Citigroup, have expended hundreds of millions of dollars each over the last generation in promoting traditional approaches to financial literacy. (more…)

Contacts:

Greenlining Signs on to Constitutional Convention Summit in Sacramento on February 24th

Berkeley, CA – The Greenlining Institute, a statewide multi-ethnic public policy organization, has long urged improvement to the state’s budget process.  Structural problems like the two-thirds rule, Proposition 13, and the consistent misuse of our initiative system has led to partisan bickering and pushed our state to the brink year after year.

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