Research

Read the Executive Summary >> Americans have come to rely on their credit cards as both a form of payment for purchases and a flexible way to borrow cash. The total amount of credit card debt is approaching a trillion dollars. Credit cards are a key source of revenue for financial institutions and usually among the most profitable loan products...

Download the executive summary (pdf) >> With roughly a trillion dollars in credit card debt, Americans have come to rely on their credit cards as both a form of payment for purchases and a flexible way to borrow cash. Credit cards are also a key source of income for financial institutions, with a rate of return that tends to be...

On August 31, President Bush announced a White House initiative to help homeowners facing foreclosure. In his press conference, the President said, "I strongly urge lenders to work with homeowners to adjust their mortgages. I believe lenders have a responsibility to help these good people to renegotiate so they can stay in their home." Regulators have urged the same actions...

Jack Kemp, a former Republican secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in an LA Times editorial, said: "Bankruptcy law is wildly off-kilter in how it treats homeownership. Under current law, courts can lower unreasonably high interest rates on secured loans, reschedule secured loan payments to make them more affordable and adjust the secured portion of loans down to the fair...

Don't Believe the Revisionist History Once upon a time, the lending industry was the loudest cheerleader in the subprime lending game, and there were no referees to stop the action. Now industry claims the government made them make millions of reckless mortgages. In fact, today's financial meltdown began with reckless subprime lending that was driven by Wall Street's desire for...

It's time to stop the scapegoating: According to a study by the Federal Reserve, 94% of high-cost loans originated during the housing boom had nothing to do with Community Reinvestment Act goals. Lending to poor didn't spur crisis -Fed's Kroszner The Comptroller of the Currency. John C. Dugan, agrees: "CRA [the Community Reinvestment Act] is not the culprit behind the...

People of color have less wealth than their white counterparts, making them more vulnerable to predatory lending. This, in turn, threatens to further widen the wealth gap. Research from several states suggests that people of color are disproportionately impacted by 400 percent APR payday lending. An examination of payday lending storefront locations in Maricopa and Pima Counties—in which over three-quarters...

As Congress considers the $700 billion bailout proposal, some argue that if the government acquires mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that include distressed loans, the government will have the right to modify those loans to prevent foreclosures. Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. Just as corporate bond holders have no right to control the bond issuer's management decisions, so too do MBS holders...

New Foreclosure and Spillover Projections We now project that almost 2.2 million subprime foreclosures will occur primarily in late 2008 through the end of 2009, up from our original 1.1 million estimate made in 2006. Additionally we estimate that 40.6 million homes in neighborhoods surrounding those foreclosures will suffer price declines averaging over $8,667 per home and resulting in a...

New Foreclosure and Spillover Projections We now project that almost 2.2 million subprime foreclosures will occur primarily in late 2008 through the end of 2009, up from our original 1.1 million estimate made in 2006. Additionally we estimate that 40.6 million homes in neighborhoods surrounding those foreclosures will suffer price declines averaging over $8,667 per home and resulting in a...