Now, Home-Equity Discrimination, Too?
A recent FRB-Atlanta study finds that closing the racial homeownership gap alone would not redress housing market racial disparities because minority homeowners cannot equitably access home equity and thus enjoy comparable access to the economic opportunities afforded by homeownership.
FHFA’s New-Product Rule Effective Date Set
Today’s Federal Register includes FHFA’s final rule on new Enterprise products now with an effective date of February 27. As we noted in our in-depth analysis, the rule requires the Enterprises to notify FHFA of new activities and then to obtain approval of any activities deemed to be new products, with FHFA having considerable discretion to determine if a new offering is an activity or a product.
FRB Atlanta: Political Compromise Essential To Successful CBDC
A new paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta staff finds that technical design features will not resolve difficult policy issues arising from CBDC issuance, concluding instead that political compromises will be necessary for successful introduction of CBDC.
FRB-Atlanta: Cardless Consumers Pay More Per Transaction
After the Fed announced imminent FedNow liftoff, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta yesterday issued a release summarizing research that concludes that lower-income consumers pay considerably more per each payment transaction due the use of cash and debit cards that do not provide credit-card rewards and the overall price increase that merchants charge to compensate for interchange fees.
Oversight Subcomm Chair Presses Agencies on Crypto Oversight, Jurisdictional Warfare
The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), today sent letters to Treasury, the SEC, the CFTC, the FTC, and several major crypto exchanges demanding information and documents showing what each is doing to combat cryptocurrency-related fraud. Calling for improved regulation and guidance, the Chairman criticizes regulators for their insufficient coordination in response to escalating risks.
FSB Highlights Crypto, Stablecoin Risk
The FSB today issued an unusual statement warning of cryptoasset risk. Rejecting the BIS’s more sanguine view that stablecoins and other digital assets have yet to prove, the FSB warns that inter-connectivity with the financial system already poses grave hazard.
HFSC to Consider CRA Reform, Rewrite
As noted, the HFSC Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions Subcommittee on Wednesday will consider the inter-agency CRA rule (see FSM Report CRA32).
Basel Committee Will Be Slow to Advance Climate-Risk Capital, Disclosure Standards
The head of the Basel Committee, Pablo Hernández de Cos, today reiterated that global bank regulators are dedicated to a cautious but determined set of climate-risk standards.
BIS Group Charts Course to Cross-Border CBDC
As part of the G20 cross-border payments roadmap, the BIS, IMF, and World Bank released a joint report today urging governments working on a CBDC to coordinate their designs and account for cross-border functionality early in their process.
FRB Atlanta Blog Refutes Dem’s Zelle Allegations
Coming in the wake of a letter sent by Senate Democrats alleging Zelle of mishandling fraud, FRB Atlanta today published a blog post defending the payments industry in cases where customers willingly authorize a fraudulent payment.
Chopra Promises to Promote Fierce Competition
CFPB director Chopra today reasserted his agency’s authority over ensuring financial-market competitiveness, describing recent actions against credit-card companies (see FSM Report CREDITCARD35), bigtech, and “junk fees” (see FSM Report CONSUMER38).
FRB-NY Staff: Mandatory Flood Insurance Harms LMI Households
A New York Fed blog post today points to another important, unintended consequence of well-meaning regulation: the adverse impact of mandatory flood-insurance coverage on LMI households.
FRB Atlanta Staff Bolsters Proposed Cash Acceptance Mandate
A blog post today from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta strengthens the case for the mandate for retailer cash acceptance recently approved by the House Financial Services Committee.
Kansas City Fed Finds Persistent Commodity-Market Price Hikes, Volatility
Reflecting concerns in a recent Petrou op-ed, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City today released a report differing from the FOMC’s optimistic inflation forecasts at least as far as they relate to commodities.
HFSC Tackles Disability Rights
Tomorrow’s HFSC Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion hearing on disability rights will focus not only on housing access, but also on the extent to which a broad range financial services are easily accessible to persons with disabilities.
Fed Survey Shows Significant LMI Investment in Payment, Investment Crypto
The Fed today released a report on household well-being in 2021, detailing an array of survey findings that generally show Americans feeling remarkably prosperous and satisfied. The Fed cautions that this may no longer pertain, but the data do suggest what may be more than a passing rebound in economic resilience for at least some families.
The Processing Problem
A new Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta study adds another element to those prior research argues are evidence of widespread racial discrimination in U.S. mortgage finance. It adds processing speed to the list of discriminatory practices that now is said to include denial disparities, pricing, and refi rates. The paper’s findings cast particular aspersions on loans originated for the GSEs, but it does so at a time when PLS distorted the market in terms of both underwriting and processing speed. Its conclusions that GSE practices exacerbated discrimination and that processing times added to the problem are not, in our view, clearly validated by the data, which suggest to us that processing speed is an artifact of other market factors (e.g., discriminatory steering by some lenders, GSE AU and put-back power).