Oct. 11, 2022

 

Capitol Hill Committee Questions Bank Branch Closures in Black America

 

By Charlene Crowell

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In recent weeks, key Capitol Hill committees held hearings with CEOs of some of the nation’s largest commercial banks. At issue for both California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, and Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown, Chair of Senate Banking, are disturbing industry trends like growing mergers, closing bank branches, and a push towards online services that together create ‘banking deserts’ in already underserved communities.

 

Although bank mergers create institutions with larger assets, for consumers and small businesses alike, these industry moves change where and how communities can access full-service banking.

 

In opening remarks at a September 16 House Financial Services Committee hearing, Chairwoman Maxine Waters made clear what she hoped the bank CEOs would address. 

 

“Over the past several years, we’ve seen the system of banking in this country take a dramatic shift,” stated Waters. “Our nation’s biggest banks have gotten even bigger during the pandemic, in part, through mergers. Regulators have rubberstamped these merger applications for far too long, and it’s past time we get to the bottom of who these mergers are actually benefiting.”

 

“I remain concerned,” continued Waters, “that branch closures across the country, which are often a consequence of mergers, are expanding banking deserts and harming communities that rely on branches for basic banking services.”

 

In response to Chairwoman Waters, Andy Cecere, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of U.S. Bancorp, offered a different perspective on industry trends, one that embraces innovation as time-saving, competitive, and convenient tools.

 

“By using our branch network in combination with digital tools, we enable our customers to be more connected to their financial future,” testified Cecere. “Last quarter, 82 percent of our consumer transactions were enabled by our digital capabilities, with 64 percent of loan sales executed digitally. Digital advancements that differentiate us from the market add to the customer experience.”

 

Jane Fraser, Chief Executive Officer, Citi shared testimony that seemed to confirm many of the issues raised by Chairwoman Waters.

 

“Our retail bank serves roughly 70 million customers in the U.S., where we operate 651 retail branches concentrated in the six metropolitan areas of New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” noted Fraser. “We have fewer than the approximately 1,000 branches we had 10 years ago, but more than the 450 branches we operated at the turn of the millennium. Roughly 29 percent of our branches are in low- and moderate-income census tracts.”

 

Days later on September 22, the Senate Banking Committee held its own hearing with bank CEOs. And like Waters, Brown’s opening remarks echoed many of the same concerns.

 

“Together, you have over $13 trillion in assets – that’s half the nation’s GDP,” said Brown. “You have hundreds of millions of customers. You also have the benefit of a federal backstop – a safety net – something that your customers don’t have.”

 

“And you profit from all those transactions – to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. With those profits – and with the taxpayer support you get – come a responsibility to actually serve your customers and the larger economy,” Brown added.

 

William H. Rogers, Jr., CEO of a recent bank merger that created Truist, was one of the Senate hearing’s witnesses.

 

“Over the past ten years, Truist closed an average of 193 branches annually,” said Rogers. “Many of these closures occurred following the merger of BB&T and SunTrust, because the two heritage banks, in many instances, maintained separate branches in the same neighborhoods and even on the same street corners. These closure plans were reviewed as part of the merger approval process and had virtually no long-term impact on branch availability or convenience for clients.”

 

Research by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) documents how still shrinking numbers of bank branches in Black and other communities of color diminish the economic futures of communities already reeling from a lack of sustained investment and redevelopment in its reported titled, The Great Consolidation of Banks and Acceleration of Bank Closures Across America.

 

From 1984 to 2021, the nation’s number of banks shrank from nearly 18,000 to fewer than 5,000, according to NCRC. More than 4,000 of these closures occurred since March 2020, coinciding with the onset of the pandemic. Further, one-third of bank branch closures occurred in majority-minority neighborhoods and/or low-to-moderate income areas, where convenient bank access is often viewed as central to ending inequities in financial services.

 

“The presence of local branch offices provides an opportunity for face-to-face interactions that build both trust and financial literacy for individual borrowers and small businesses…Today’s larger, less-local banks are still charged with serving the credit needs of the entire community they serve,” the report continues. “Changes in how the public interacts with their bank do not create an exemption to the law.”

 

Summarizing his committee’s concerns, Chairman Brown underscored to the CEOs what might have been overlooked.

 

“It’s past time for the financial industry to be as good to the American people as the country has been to you,” concluded Brown. “We will continue to hold you to the highest standards, so that Americans can keep more of their hard-earned money.”

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Oct. 4, 2022

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For the more than 400 years that Americans of African descent have been in America, Whites generally have never come to terms with enslaving millions of Black people – America’s original sin - or what to do with them in the aftermath. And in the years since chattel slavery ended, African-Americans have contended with and overcome formidable barriers to progress, including Jim Crow, de jure and de facto segregation, the Black Codes, deeply embedded racial discrimination and sytemic racism.

Although African-Americans were purportedly freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, they have never been totally free from being under the boot of white domination and supremacy. Racism is a shapeshifter enforced by lynchings, rapes, land theft and murder; chain gangs; racial terror dispensed by the Ku Klux Klan and an assortment of White domestic terror organizations, police officers, sheriffs and others in law enforcement. And more recently, racism and discrimination are seen in the form of mass incarceration and almost free prison labor; residential segregation; restrictive covenants; separate but equal schools and facilities; inferior or no education; and redlining.

That’s where H.R. 40 – The Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans – and Reparations comes in.   

“We have toiled and struggled, told our people to take the bag off your head because there’s misinterpretation in the whole community,” said Texas’ Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, the driver of H.R. 40. “The study is the roadmap for the physical and mental trajectory of Reparations.”

Jackson-Lee chaired a House committee hearing on the bill on February 17 that allowed for a substantive discussion about Reparations and the movement toward the development and implementation of a palette of proposals designed to repair, compensate and heal Black people in the U.S. That discussion on reparations spilled over into a brain trust during the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference in D.C. last week.

“There’s an economic basis for H.R. 40. It’s not frivolous. (Union Gen. William) Sherman talked about 40 acres and a mule, but we never got it,” Jackson Lee said. “Reconstruction was never completed. We endured Jim Crowism, hangings and George White being driven out of Congress in 1901. Legislatively, we’ll lead the formulation of this plan for African-Americans.”

Washington, DC attorney and author Nkechi Taifa argued that Reparations are necessary to satisfy an enormous debt unpaid to African-Americans.

“This is a demand for a formal acknowledgement of a historical wrong,” said Taifa, a Reparations advocate, justice system reform strategist, author and scholar.

Taifa, founder, principal and CEO of The Taifa Group LLC, said Reparations activists are demanding “official and unfettered apologies, recognition of injuries and the continuation of policies and practices in education and culture that continues today.”

Taifa, Jackson Lee and other panelists at the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Weekend, said this involves a commitment from corporations, industries, educational institutions, state government, the Catholic Church and actual compensation in whatever form or forms agreed upon. But any advancement will only come from being audacious and applying persistent and pervasive pressure. Yet, she acknowledged that movement on this issue will be easier if Reparations doesn’t impede the progress of white people.

“There has to be an alignment of Black and White people. It has to serve the interests of white people,” Taifa asserted. “Morality has never been the province of White people. White people won’t be moved by moral considerations alone. White people act out of their own interests. Reparations is the only policy that comprehends this.”

The panelists, who spoke as a part of the Judiciary Braintrust hosted by Jackson Lee, argued that in 2022, Reparations is a necessary tool and remedy to substantially concentrate on reversing the vast Black/White wealth gap; the lack of access to a quality education; providing Black people access to decent, well-paying jobs; and elevating African-Americans on all the social metrics at which they are now at the bottom.

In practical terms, the panel added, Reparations will lift African Americans people out of poverty, eliminate redlining and force banks and other financial institutions to end extending subprime loans to Black and brown people, and pressure mortgage companies to begin to deal fairly and honesty with African Americans so they have easier access to homeownership and are not punished just for being Black when selling their homes.  

“I’m inspired by what’s happening in Congress these days,” said New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman. “We’re very close to having this pass in the House. It’s the first time in 30 years that the bill was voted out of committee. It was introduced for 30 years and never moved before. We had a markup and a vote. We’re in a moment of time where this is possible.”

Bowman, a progressive who entered Congress in 2018, reminded the audience that this November’s midterms are the most important and consequential in our lifetimes.

“The Jan 6 we saw the insurrection by White supremacists, the day after the first African American and Jew was elected to the US Senate,” Bowman said. “Whenever there’s progress, there’s backlash. November is absolutely the most important vote of our lives. If we keep the House in November and grow our numbers in the Senate, we can pass H.R. 40 by the end of the year …”

In actuality, Bowman said, “we all know we don’t need a commission to study Reparations,” because the evidence is clear on how deeply racism and discrimination has affected African Americans’ education, economics, health, wealth and homeownership. 

“We see the impact of slavery. It lives in the body and cells of Black people. There has been no truth, no racial healing,” said Bowman. “(But) we continue to succeed despite White supremacist colonial settlers. This needs to be done. White supremacy has run its course. It’s destroying democracy, the planet and ultimately will destroy humanity.”

A crucial element to counter that is Reparations, Bowman added. “H.R. 40 is the first step of saving ourselves.” 

Proponents of reparations say their argument is straightforward: America — through more than 200 years of slavery — built its wealth on the labor and very existence of enslaved black men, women and children. The century that followed emancipation saw the creation of policies that discriminated against Black people and largely excluded them from wealth building, creating an inherited disadvantage for future generations. Reparations, its supporters say, provides redress for both the original sin of slavery and America’s subsequent failure to address generations’ worth of accrued disadvantage in black communities.

Damario Solomon-Simmons – a Tulsa attorney who has been representing the three remaining survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre and plaintiffs, Viola "Mother" Fletcher, 107, Lessie “Mother” Benningfield, 106, and 101-year-old Hughes Van Ellis – told the audience, “Reparations is owed, Reparations is due, Reparations Now!”

“I have some good news: we have living survivors, photos, videos and thousands of documents,” said Solomon-Simmons. “We made history on May 2. We were the first survivors decreed to move our case forward of more than 100 plaintiffs. When that happened, Rep. Johnson Lee was sitting in the front row with 300 people. We need Reparations for enslavement, Jim Crow. We don’t a study … Biden can sign an executive order. There’s nothing stopping him because we need Reparations. Reparations owed, Reparations Due, Reparations Now!!!”

The survivors, through Solomon-Simmons, are seeking substantive justice and reparations from Tulsa city leaders and the state for the 1921 massacre of at least 300 African Americans, in Tulsa, and demanding that these entities deliver justice, financial and emotional repair and avoid reducing the tragedy to mere symbolism. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, White mobs attacked a Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving around 300 dead and 10,000 homeless, in one of the worst massacres in American history. The mob also bombed and razed 36 square blocks of businesses, homes and other property with the damage to real estate and personal property amounting to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $34.18 million in 2021) to Tulsa’s Greenwood District, also known as the Black Wall Street, then the site of a prosperous African American community.

Cornell William Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, dispelled the oft-cited myth that granting African Americans Reparations is an aberration.

“There are a great many studies about harm and repair is regular and routine,” said Brooks, an attorney and former head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“Data suggests that reparations is commonplace. For example, veteran’s injuries, losing property, bad vaccines and when farmers lose their crops. Reparations is not aberrational but is a customary means of redress.”

Sept. 27, 2022

Leading Clergy Call on Congress to Act on Poverty Before Mid-term Elections

By Chrisleen Herard

Retired Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A melting pot of religious leaders has gathered in a congressional briefing to discuss the 140 million poor and low-income people living in poverty across the United States, and to call on Congress to act upon it.

According to Poverty USA, when the COVID-19 variant presented itself and shook the world in 2020, 11.7 million people were lifted out of poverty. This wouldn’t have been attainable, however, without the temporary economic relief that was granted as an outcome of the infectious disease, such as stimulus payments, the child tax credit and other benefit programs.

But as the pandemic era seemingly comes to an end, so have the transient measures that provided millions of families and children with financial assistance.

“Have you met Michael?” said retired Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. “Michael is the third grade student in elementary school down the street from the church that I pastored in Baltimore city. Michael would get himself up early in the morning to go to school ‘cause that's where his two main meals are, and when there is no school, there is no meal.”

The child tax credit provided families with $3,000 for each child aged between six and 17, and $3,600 for children under the age of six, (half of the credit was paid in monthly installments while the other half would be claimed by the parents on their taxes), but regardless of the number of people it helped, the tax program was not expanded after ending in December of last year.

A Columbia University study found that the expiration of the child tax credit increased the child poverty rate from 12.1 percent to 17 percent in 2022, resulting in an additional 3.7 million children living below the poverty line in comparison to the previous year.

In the wake of this, faith leaders now call for Congress to make a change, before midterm elections begin in November, by voting to not only reinstate and expand policies that aid in lifting people out of poverty, but to also increase the minimum wage.

“I have been struggling to pay my bills since I’ve been working at 16 years old,” a woman at a Poor People’s Campaign rally said in a video shown at the briefing. “I work full time, 64 hours a week, 7 days a week, I. Am. Exhausted.”

It has been nearly 13 years since Congress increased the federal minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 — the longest amount of time the government has gone without increasing the wage since they first introduced it back in 1938 — despite recent inflation rates hitting a 40-year high of 9.1 percent this past June.

The stagnant wage has plagued a spiraling cost-of-living crisis as more than 50 million people in America are left to continue working for a price that does not allow them to live comfortably, and some with no job and nowhere to live at all.

Rev. Tonny Algood, tri-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and a member of the executive committee for the National Union of the Homeless, through tears said, “The (Alabama) city council voted to pass an ordinance to make it illegal for the homeless to sleep anywhere on public property…I asked the city council member who introduced that, I said, “Where are they gonna sleep?...His answer was,“’I don’t care,’”

Algood concluded, “We’re not surviving out here, we’re dying. We can’t wait until after the midterms.”

Amongst the 50 million people who are working below a living wage in the U.S,. are millions who are also impacted by voter suppression, another big issue that was addressed in the briefing.

Imam Saffet Catovic, head of the Office for Interfaith Community Alliances and Government Relations for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), said, “Just two years after ISNA was established…our founders…celebrated, honored and gave thanks for the hard work and the great sacrifice of those who were part of the civil rights struggle for freedom and equality for all Americans, and for their bringing the 1965 Voting Rights bill to a vote…They did so because it was the right thing to do then, and it is the right thing to do now.”

In addition to gerrymandering, limited polls and narrow voting times, the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) has been restricted from further ensuring fair elections.

Section 5 of the VRA enacted a formula that required states with a history of discriminatory voting practices to seek preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice if they desired to make any changes to their voting procedures.

The 2013 Shelby v. Holder’s case, however, would find that this formula unconstitutional because it was outdated, ultimately making it harder for some voters, especially those who are poor and Black, to have a free voice in United States elections without having a policy that will hold states and politicians accountable for attempting to limit their access. Consequently, this makes it difficult for those citizens to vote for laws that address the nation's ongoing poverty issues, and vote against the ones that do not.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is a proposed legislation that was introduced last year to combat the overturning of the VRA’s preclearance with a more moderate formula, restoring protection for all Americans right to vote if Congress votes to pass it.

“All of us, irrespective of our color, our socioeconomic status, our station in life, or circumstances we may find ourselves in, have a right to freedom of speech, and this also means to be able to speak politically,” said Catovic, “For if we do not speak politically in this world we live in, we do not speak at all, and the sacred right to vote is the basis and at the heart of our political speech.”

The words “140 million” stood like an elephant in the room where the conference took place as a constant reminder that this is the number of people who cannot afford to live, and that the cold hands of poverty continue to touch an assemblage of people regardless of race, class and age.

The faith leaders are hoping that the members of Congress vote to bring forth justice to the social and moral issues surrounding the poverty, wage and voting rights in the country, and to take charge in representing the citizens who elected them to do so.

Reverend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove stated, “I want to thank Congress…for doing something that I don’t think happens very much in the United States, but I think this year Congress really has used its power, particularly through public hearings, to highlight the big lie,”

“What we’re talking about here today is perhaps a bigger lie. It’s bigger because it’s been told a lot longer…and it’s bigger because it (has) killed a lot more people. And the lie is, poor people are to be blamed for their poverty.”

Sept. 20, 2022

 

Financial Fairness at Risk with Proposed TD Bank-First Horizon Merger

 By Charlene Crowell

 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As banks grow larger through mergers and focus on growing online and mobile services, serious concerns emerge on how fair and how accessible banking will be to traditionally underserved Black and Latino communities. In most cases, consumers and small businesses alike view bank branch accessibility and convenience as key to serving their communities.

 

Consumer advocates currently are urging bank regulators to thoroughly examine a proposed TD Bank merger, particularly in light of the lender’s record with home loans and overdraft fees.

 

Earlier this year, TD Bank announced its plan to acquire First Horizon Bank and its $85 billion in assets and 417 locations, largely in the South. If approved by federal regulators, the merger would create the sixth-largest bank in America.

 

TD Bank already has more than $1.3 trillion in , 27 million customers and over 1,100 locations spread across 15 states and the District of Columbia. In Atlanta and Dallas, the bank does business as TD Ameritrade. Its largest number of branches by state are located in New York (367), Florida (355), and New Jersey (367).

 

According to its website, “Black experiences, in all their diversity, are at the heart of our drive for positive, sustainable change.”

But as Sportin’ Life, a character in the immortal folk opera, Porgy and Bess, said: “It ain’t necessarily so.” Indeed, TD’s business record sends a different message.

 

Earlier this year, WHYY, the National Public Radio station serving the Philadelphia metro area, reported that in its region between 2018 and 2020, “TD Bank was more likely to approve a mortgage loan for a low-income white applicant than a high-income Black applicant….”

 

TD Bank had the lowest mortgage approval rate for Black applicants in its entire metro area. During this time, “the institution denied 20 percent of all purchase mortgages, but denied nearly 40 percent of all Black applicants,” according to the data, which was culled from Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. By comparison, the denial rate among white applicants was 20 percent.”

 

A similar finding appeared in a 2018 investigative article by Reveal News: “African American and Latino borrowers are more likely to get turned down by TD Bank than by any other major mortgage lender. The bank turned down 54 percent of black homebuyers and 45 percent of Latino homebuyers, more than three times the industry averages.”

 

Then there’s TD Bank’s poor record on overdraft fees.

 

Just two years ago the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) entered into a consent order with TD Bank that provided $97 million in restitution to 1.42 million consumers, and the CFPB charged the firm a $25 million civil penalty. The bank had illegally charged customers overdraft fees without first obtaining their consent before enrolling them in its optional overdraft .

 

Overdraft fees often exploit consumers’ short-term cash needs. The vast majority of overdraft fee revenue comes from people with account balances that average less than $350.

 

TD Bank’s business model relies far more on overdraft fees than other large banks. While some of its peer institutions eliminated overdraft fees, TD charges a $35 overdraft fee as many as three times a day.

 

Fortunately, consumer advocates are registering their serious concerns with federal regulators.

 

“TD Bank cannot serve the needs of low-income communities while insisting on maintaining this large stream of revenue that, by definition, depends on consumers who lack funds,” testified Nadine Chabrier, Senior Policy and Litigation Counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), at a recent hearing on the merger proposal. She noted that in deciding whether to approve a merger, government regulators, by law, must consider whether community needs would be served.

 

In an August 23 joint letter sent to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve, agencies whose approval of the deal is required, consumer advocates made clear their opposition.

 

“This merger will result in a significant presence in the Southeast, in states like Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, and Florida, among others, where there is a concentration of Black and Latino communities and poverty, often overlapping. These communities bear the acute and disproportionate burden of overdraft fees, calling into the question whether the needs and convenience of the community will be met,” wrote the advocates.  Elsewhere, they note, “Many affected by relentless overdraft fees end up having their checking account closed, and reentry into the banking system is difficult.”

 

Signatories on the letter included: Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, California Reinvestment Coalition, Demos, and CRL.

 

Federal regulators, appointed by the Biden Administration, have signaled scrutiny of mergers is a renewed priority.

 

Michael Barr, the newly appointed Vice Chair for Supervision of the Federal Reserve System, staked out this position as part of a wide-ranging September 7 speech titled, “Making the Financial System Safer and Fairer.”

 

“Fairness is fundamental to financial oversight, and I am committed to using the tools of regulation, supervision, and enforcement so that businesses and households have access to the services they need, the information necessary to make their financial decisions, and protection from unfair treatment,” noted Barr.

 

Here's hoping Mr. Barr and other regulators keep their word.

 

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..