WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--In a surprise win for state regulators over the banking industry, a divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave New York prosecutors the green light to investigate national banks for lending discrimination.
The high court, in a 5-4 opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, said federal banking regulations did not pre-empt the ability of states to enforce their own fair-lending laws.
The ruling was a win for the New York attorney general's office, which had been seeking to investigate the banks' residential real-estate lending practices since 2005.
Scalia said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo couldn't issue executive subpoenas to the banks but could bring enforcement actions against them in court.
The decision was a surprise, because decades of Supreme Court rulings have favored federal banking regulation at the expense of state regulation.
The American Bankers Association said the ruling "changes over 140 years of settled law," and expressed worry that national banks now would "face a patchwork of duplicative and conflicting federal and state regulation and enforcement actions."
Cuomo said the ruling "reaffirms the vital role state attorneys general play in protecting consumers from illegal and improper practices by our country's biggest and most powerful banks."
Former Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer launched the probe, saying mortgage data showed black and Hispanic borrowers received a larger percentage of high-interest home loans than white borrowers.
Spitzer asked several banks, including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup Inc. (C), to voluntarily produce non-public information about their mortgage-lending practices in New York.
In response, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a consortium of national banks each sued to block Spitzer's investigation.
The banks said that, because they were regulated by federal authorities, state investigators were broadly precluded from stepping in with their own enforcement actions. Allowing concurrent federal and state regulation would be burdensome and confusing, they said.
The banks and the federal government prevailed in the lower courts, thanks to a 2004 change in OCC policy that made it very difficult for state authorities to enforce state laws against national banks.
Scalia said Monday that the OCC policy change wasn't valid.
The divided ruling didn't split along the court's normal ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose views often align with Scalia's, wrote the court's dissent.
Spitzer had called OCC's bid to block his investigation shameful and said the state's probe was needed because the federal government wasn't acting aggressively to investigate racially discriminatory lending practices.
All of the other 49 states backed New York in the case, saying they have historically had the power to enforce consumer-protection laws against national banks. That power, the states said, was particularly important now because of the widespread mortgage abuses that contributed to the nation's economic crisis.
The case is Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, 08-453.
The ruling was a win for the New York attorney general's office, which had been seeking to investigate the banks' residential real-estate lending practices since 2005.
Scalia said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo couldn't issue executive subpoenas to the banks but could bring enforcement actions against them in court.
The decision was a surprise, because decades of Supreme Court rulings have favored federal banking regulation at the expense of state regulation.
The American Bankers Association said the ruling "changes over 140 years of settled law," and expressed worry that national banks now would "face a patchwork of duplicative and conflicting federal and state regulation and enforcement actions."
Cuomo said the ruling "reaffirms the vital role state attorneys general play in protecting consumers from illegal and improper practices by our country's biggest and most powerful banks."
Former Attorney General and Governor Eliot Spitzer launched the probe, saying mortgage data showed black and Hispanic borrowers received a larger percentage of high-interest home loans than white borrowers.
Spitzer asked several banks, including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Citigroup Inc. (C), to voluntarily produce non-public information about their mortgage-lending practices in New York.
In response, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a consortium of national banks each sued to block Spitzer's investigation.
The banks said that, because they were regulated by federal authorities, state investigators were broadly precluded from stepping in with their own enforcement actions. Allowing concurrent federal and state regulation would be burdensome and confusing, they said.
The banks and the federal government prevailed in the lower courts, thanks to a 2004 change in OCC policy that made it very difficult for state authorities to enforce state laws against national banks.
Scalia said Monday that the OCC policy change wasn't valid.
The divided ruling didn't split along the court's normal ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose views often align with Scalia's, wrote the court's dissent.
Spitzer had called OCC's bid to block his investigation shameful and said the state's probe was needed because the federal government wasn't acting aggressively to investigate racially discriminatory lending practices.
All of the other 49 states backed New York in the case, saying they have historically had the power to enforce consumer-protection laws against national banks. That power, the states said, was particularly important now because of the widespread mortgage abuses that contributed to the nation's economic crisis.
The case is Cuomo v. Clearing House Association, 08-453.
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2 comentarios:
Otra más de Alí Babá.
De estar comprado en Banca Comercial USA sólo vale Citi.
¿recuerdan cuando les hablaba de Sotomayor?
pues bien :
a) Mandan los Estados, la Banca se queda sin poder.
b) Obama es Negro, pero podía ser blanco o amarillo.
Resulta que a los negros y a los hispanos les daban tipos de interés más altos.
Entiendo que era por temas de Riesgos, i.e cuanto más riesgo un producto de activo, mayor tipo de interés.
No me gusta por donde vá el liberador del mundo.
WASHINGTON, jun 29 (Reuters) - La Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos emitió el lunes un fallo que permite a la fiscalía general del estado de Nueva York investigar si bancos de alcance nacional discriminaron a personas negras o hispanas a la hora de otorgar créditos hipotecarios.
Los magistrados rechazaron así un fallo previo de una corte de apelaciones que impedía a la fiscalía investigar o forzar la aplicación de las leyes que garantizan justicia en prácticas de endeudamiento.
La sentencia echa por tierra una regulación de la Oficina del Controlador de la Moneda que impide a los estados aplicar sus propias leyes, aún cuando las normas federales fuesen inadecuadas para proteger a los consumidores.
El juez Antonin Scalia dijo que sería "raro" que los estados no puedan forzar la aplicación de leyes válidas a bancos nacionales.
El fiscal general Andre Cuomo dijo en un comunicado que el fallo es "una victoria enorme para los consumidores en todo el país" y que fortalece el rol de los fiscales generales "de protección a los consumidores de prácticas ilegales e impropias de los mayores y más poderosos bancos".
La Clearing House Association LLC, un grupo de grandes bancos, dijo estar "decepcionada porque el principio de uniformidad en el control de bancos nacionales fue roto", según un portavoz.
El jefe de la Oficina del Controlador de la Moneda, John Dugan, dijo que está decepcionado por el fallo pero aseguró que trabajará con los estados para asegurar el acceso justo a los productos financiero y a la protección al consumidor".
Cuomo estaba intentando resucitar una investigación que comenzó en el 2005 para determinar si existió discriminación racial en los procesos de otorgamientos de créditos hipotecarios.
La oficina Dugan envió en el pasado cartas a Citigroup Inc (C.N), HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) y Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) en respuesta a datos que mostraron que las tasas de interés en los préstamos para negros o hispanos eran mayores que el resto.
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