The regulatory reform proposal released today by Chairman Dodd (D-CT) goes a long way to ensuring that consumers and communities across the country have access to safe, affordable, and sustainable financial products.   We believe that the proposal brings us closer to ending the assumption that some financial institutions are too big to fail, protecting the financial system against systemic risk, creating a single federal banking regulator, and enforcing the consumer protections that have gone unenforced for far too long.
 

The Chicago Tribune recently reported on American Union Savings & Loan Association’s objection to receiving a poor rating under Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) from the FDIC, its regulator.   American Union’s claim—that “reckless lenders attract [mortgage] applications and get favorable CRA ratings [and] these applications turned into bad loans”—is one that has been widely discredited by banking regulators and researchers.