The firm (OneWest) and Mnuchin have been accused of unfair lending practices including discriminating against minority borrowers and aggressive foreclosures. …What, the same kind of accusations that made banks get into so-called “predatory lending” in the first place, which compounded the financial crisis? And so firms that work to avoid financial trouble get accused of the same lies as the left told 23 years ago.
The whole predatory lending thing was at most tertiary to the financial crisis. Glass-Steagal repeal and zero interest rates were the key elements that made it happen.
At least some of this criticism, if not all, is about “outcome-based criteria.” I.e. it didn’t matter that the pool of black applicants actually WAS poorer and had a harder time meeting the terms of standard mortgage program. The shortage of successful applications from them was held to be ipso facto wrongful discrimination.
Mnuchin’s policies would have been quite fair when viewed by color blind financial criteria.
Now if a bank wanted to put its own skin in the game and have special incentive programs to try to give people on the margins a hand up... that’s about the bank and its own choices. But to force it turns it, at best, into a morass of pitfalls.