Feds not learning their lesson

Keep suing rational businesses, dummies



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Quote:

Virtually all of the bank’s efforts to attract customers were focused within its so-called trade area, prosecutors say. The “vast majority” of Evans’s print marketing efforts appeared in local newspapers that were not circulated on the East Side of Buffalo, the suit says. Evans Bank also clustered its branches in predominantly white neighborhoods, according to prosecutors. Of its 14 branches throughout New York State, 11 were in Buffalo’s suburbs, which largely consist of white borrowers. The lending policy at Evans, prosecutors say, walled off people living outside the trade area from qualifying for certain products at all, regardless of their creditworthiness. For example, one loan product, Evans Community Solutions, was available only to borrowers living within the bank’s trade area. Poring over reams of information from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, a federal law requiring banks to report data on their loans so that regulators can identify patterns of racial discrimination, prosecutors discovered a lending gulf. From 2009 to 2012, the data shows, Evans received 1,114 applications for residential mortgages, but only four — or less than 1 percent — came from applicants who identified as African-American. Because some areas in Buffalo were hit harder by the foreclosure crisis, it makes sense that all lenders, including Evans Bank and its rivals, received fewer applications from minority borrowers. Still, prosecutors say, Evans Bank’s lending in African-American communities lagged behind its rivals. Compared with other banks that maintained a branch in Buffalo, prosecutors found that Evans “drew mortgage applications from African-American borrowers and East Side borrowers at by far the lowest rate,” the lawsuit says. Even banks without an office in Buffalo, prosecutors say, managed to make more loans to African-American borrowers in the area at more than “double the rates that Evans did.”

Are we really suing banks because they're not opening up branches in areas where people don't have money or credit? Is this real life?

Feds not learning their lesson