California Must Take Strong Action in Face of Failure of Federal Reserve to Enact Meaningful Reform on Home Foreclosures

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Ted Lieu
Chair
California State Assembly Banking and Finance Committee

The roots of the worst home foreclosure crisis in American history can be traced directly to the Federal Reserve’s lax regulatory regime during the last few years. Apparently the Federal Reserve still has not learned its lesson when today it promulgated reforms that will do little to stem a crisis of this magnitude from repeating.

The Federal Reserve utterly failed to ban yield spread premiums, also known as broker kickbacks, which allows mortgage brokers to receive incentives to place people in higher interest, riskier loans even though the borrower qualified for a lower interest, prime loan. Two respected studies have shown that between 55% to 61% of all subprime borrowers had actually qualified for prime loans.

Instead of banning such kickbacks, the Federal Reserve merely required disclosure. However, in states across the nation and particularly in California, there is zero emphasis on financial literacy and most people fail financial literacy tests. As a result, the disclosures will largely be meaningless and do nothing to prevent brokers from being financially rewarded by placing people in higher interest loans that are unsuitable for them.

The Federal Reserve also failed to place adequate controls in prepayment penalties. As currently proposed, a lender can still place a massive prepayment penalty that lasts for up to five years. One of the reasons we have a foreclosure crisis is because homeowners were unable to refinance to a more affordable loan due to massive prepayment penalties. The Federal Reserve’s proposals will do little to address this problem.

The Federal Reserve’s proposed rule on ability to repay requires that a borrower show that a lender engaged in a “pattern or practice.” That is corporate protection at its worst. How would a borrower ascertain a pattern or practice of how the lender treats other borrowers? Moreover, why should the borrower care how the lender acted vis a vis other borrowers? If a lender wronged a borrower, that single act should be actionable by itself.