NEWSWIRE–A Kansas bank has become the ninth closed by federal regulators this year, amid bad real estate loans and falling housing prices.

Not dollars or drachma or krona or kips,
No sheqel or shilling or rand,
Not ruble or rupee or money in clips:
No sawbuck, a fifty, a grand.
Not penning or fenning or guilder or gold,
No euro or florin or francs,

What we’re counting today is not bills that will fold,
But banks.

http://www.newsandverse.com
Light verse, ripped from the headlines

Lax Oversight by State and Federal Regulators
Testimony
before the
National Commission on Fair Housing
and Equal Opportunity
http://www.nationalfairhousing.org/LinkClick. aspx?fileticket=8ZeI1MEbaBk%3D&tabid=3009& mid=6208

Federal banking regulators failed to reign in abusive practices at the lending institutions they regulated. Further, they prevented states from taking action against those institutions. Federally regulated lenders also took advantage of this lax oversight to originate huge volumes of loans. Depository institutions were able to use rules from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and other regulators to their benefit. The OCC, following a similar rule issued by the Office of Thrift Supervision, issued a statement providing an exemption for its member institutions from state anti-predatory lending laws. Not only did it provide pre-emption for the member bank, but the pre-emption extended to the affiliates and third party vendors of the member institution. Thus mortgage brokers doing business on behalf of the company and any subprime subsidiary would, according to the federal regulators, be exempt from state regulation and state lending laws that prohibited abusive lending practices. This was damaging to communities because many states that had responded more quickly than the federal government and established stringent anti-predatory lending statutes were unable to apply those statutes to the subprime affiliates of some federally regulated banks. However, the OCC rule and others like it were a boon to lenders who were able to make larger profit margins on subprime loans. Lenders, who for years had been telling civil rights and consumer advocacy groups that there was insufficient need for credit in minority neighborhoods, were now able to do high levels of lending through their subprime affiliates in central city neighborhoods – much to the detriment of homeowners and buyers in minority neighborhoods. And while this was going on, the federal financial regulatory agencies did nothing except inhibit the efforts of state regulators to take any meaningful action. At the same time, FHEO failed in its responsibility to ensure that all federal departments work to affirmatively further fair housing.

>> What about like maybe 4 or 5 years ago?