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530 Dissenting Statement

Silver: Actually part of some of these CRA agreements was meeting with the bank two
or three times a year and actually going through, ‘Here’s what you’ve promised. Here’s
what you’ve loaned.’ Th at would happen on a one-on-one basis with the banks and the
community organizations. 156
Nevertheless, when the Commission staff asked the four largest banks (Bank
of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo) for data on whether the
merger-related commitments were fulfi lled and in what amount, most of the banks
supplied only limited information. Th ey contended that they did not have the
information or that it was too diffi cult to get, and the information they supplied was
sketchy at best.
In some cases, the information supplied to the Commission by the banks,
in letters from their counsel, refl ected fewer loans than they had claimed in press
releases to have made in fulfi llment of their commitments. Th e press release
amounts were JPMorgan Chase (including WaMu, $835 billion), Citi ($274 billion),
and Bank of America ($229 billion), totaled $1.3 trillion in CRA loans between
2001 and 2008, and had been presented to the Commission by Edward Pinto in the
Triggers memo. No Wells Fargo press releases could be found, but in response
157
to questions from the Commission Wells provided a great deal of data in spread
sheets that could not be interpreted or understood without further discussion with
representatives of the bank. However, the Commission terminated the investigation
of the merger-related CRA commitments in August 2010, before the necessary data
could be gathered. For this reason, the Wells data could not be unpacked, interpreted
in discussion with Wells offi cials, and analyzed.
Aft er I protested the limited eff orts of the Commission on this issue in
October 2010, the Commission made a belated attempt to restart the investigation
of the merger-related CRA commitments in November. However, only one bank
had responded by the deadline for submission of this dissenting statement. As with
the bank responses, additional work was required to understand the information
received, and there was no time, and no Commission staff , to follow up.
As a result of the dilatory nature of the Commission’s investigation, it was
impossible to determine how many loans were actually made under their merger-
related CRA commitments by the four banks and their predecessors. Th is in
turn impeded any eff ort to fi nd out where these loans are today and hence their
delinquency rates. It appears that in many instances the Commission management
constrained the staff in their investigation into CRA by limiting the number of
document requests and interviews and by preventing the staff from following up
with the institutions that failed to respond adequately to requests for data.
Where are these mortgages today? Where these loans are today must necessarily
be a matter of speculation. Some of the banks told the FCIC staff that they do not
distinguish between CRA loans and other loans, and so could not provide this
information. Under the GSE Act, Fannie and Freddie had an affi rmative obligation
to help banks to meet their CRA obligations, and they undoubtedly served as a
buyer for the loans made by the largest banks and their predecessors pursuant to

156 Interview of Josh Silver of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, June 16, 2010.
157 Edward Pinto, Exhibit 2 to the Triggers memo, dated April 21, 2010, http://www.aei.org/docLib/
Pinto-Sizing-Total-Federal-Contributions.pdf.