Press Releases

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...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California mortgage lenders Countrywide, GMAC, Litton and HomeEq announced today that they plan to follow the direction of FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and institute systematic loan modifications for borrowers with resetting ARMs. This unprecedented move is expected to provide relief for tens of thousands of California borrowers and, if properly implemented, should serve as a model...

The Honorable Barney Frank The Honorable Spencer Bachus Chairman Ranking Member House Financial Services Committee House Financial Services Committee Dear Chairman Frank and Ranking Member Bachus: We, the undersigned organizations, write to present our views on H.R. 3915, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007. While we greatly appreciate your efforts to reduce predatory lending and to restore...

U.S. House of RepresentativesWashington, DC 20515 Dear Representative: The undersigned groups are writing in anticipation of floor action on H.R. 3915, the "Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007." We appreciate the bipartisan effort on this important issue and look forward to working with the Congress to pass a strong law to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Unfortunately, however...

Take it from former payday borrowers: loan sharks who left the state will not be missed. A new report from the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks has found that the absence of the payday loan shops that once dotted North Carolina's strip malls and street corners has made little difference to most survey respondents. Of the former borrowers who have...