Press Releases

For the third time in four months, the Treasury Department has announced a plan ("Project Lifeline") to encourage the lending industry to do more to prevent an alarming level of foreclosures. The Department's proposals underscore the serious economic damage triggered by reckless lending in the subprime market, which has produced the worst housing decline since the Great Depression. We at...

New legislation introduced today by House Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) curbs some of the most abusive credit card lending practices, consumer groups said. "This legislation is an important step forward in eliminating the worst credit card tricks and traps that sap billions of dollars from...

Recently the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) released an analysis showing that during the third quarter of 2007, mortgage lenders initiated foreclosures seven times more frequently than they modified mortgages, and 13 times more frequently than they modified problematic adjustable-rate subprime loans. In addition, CRL estimated that under the Treasury Department's voluntary plan, only 3% of homeowners (118,200) with adjustable-rate...

Read our Analysis>> An updated analysis by the Center for Responsible Lending shows the Treasury Department's plan involving streamlined loan modifications of distressed mortgages will prevent only 118,200 foreclosures—about 3% of the outstanding subprime mortgages with adjustable interest rates that are causing the current market turmoil. This analysis shows the Treasury plan, plus existing lender modifications, barely make a dent...

As the economy continues to suffer from fall-out from subprime mortgage foreclosures, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) is accused of skipping legally required steps to remove people from their homes in Minnesota. Today a group of Hennepin County homeowners with subprime mortgages filed a class action lawsuit to stop illegal foreclosures by MERS, a Virginia-based company. The suit alleges...

Bank of America has the resources and the will to begin cleaning up the subprime mess that Countrywide has played such a large role in creating. We have nine months between now and the official merger date. This will be the most important period since the Great Depression for dealing with the millions of bad Countrywide loans that have pushed...

The Federal Reserve Board (FRB) is uniquely positioned to restore confidence in the housing market because it is the one federal agency with the authority to set standards for all home loan originators. Unfortunately, the proposed rules issued by the FRB today represent yet another missed opportunity for the agency to rein in practices that have hurt millions of American...

Center for Responsible Lending research finds that the payday lending debt trap persists even in states that restrict payday loans while exempting them from interest rate caps. In " Springing the Debt Trap," CRL finds that high numbers of borrowers are still caught in payday loans for long periods of time, even in states that have passed certain provisions intended...

The payday lending trade group Community Financial Services Association (CFSA) is using a working paper based on insufficient data to claim that working families are worse off in states with strong consumer lending laws that cover payday lending. ( Read CRL's critique of the paper.) Payday loans trap borrowers in loans they cannot afford to pay off at interest rates...

With 2 million foreclosures predicted over the next two years, the plan announced by President Bush for targeted loan modifications for some subprime borrowers is a positive, but very limited, first step. CRL estimates the President's plan will only help about 7% of subprime borrowers—about 145,000 families—because of the program's limited scope. For example, the plan does nothing to help...