NAACP Economic Department

Economic Policy Institute continues to document that state unemployment levels for minority workers continue to far outpace those of their white residents.

This report on Michigan, a part of their larger project on Jobs and Unemployment and the disparate impact on minorities, is telling,

“The unemployment rate of blacks in Michigan is 18.7 percent, about two and a half times that of whites (7.5 percent), and has been for much of the last five years.

Of the 24 states with large enough African American populations to track with quarterly CPS unemployment data, Michigan has the highest African American unemployment rate.

In Michigan, three groups—all workers, white workers, and African American workers—have higher unemployment rates than the national rate for the same group.”

 

Source:[Economic Policy Institute Jobs and Unemployment][Economic Policy InstituteOngoing Joblessness in Michigan]

In this provocative Op-ed in the New York Times, Jared Bernstein discusses the idea of full employment, what the really means and how we have achieved it before.

Full employment as a matter of policy refers to the use of public money to employ those adults who want to work but cannot find employment in order that they might consume goods and services produced by the economy

Source:[New York Times][Jaredbernsteinblog.com]

With the Obama administration nominating Mel Watt to run the FHFA many members of the public still are unaware of this agency, its purpose, its mission, and the firestorm of controversy it has been at the heart of since 2008.

The Federal Home Finance Agency (FHFA) is the conservator, or caretaker, of the mortgage funding giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Ed Demarco, a lifelong civil servant, has been acting director of the agency since no other nominee has been able to pass Congressional scrutiny.

Demarco has angered many by refusing to allow loans owned by Fannie and Freddie to be “written down”.

He has also spearheaded the creation of a new system of funding mortgage loans, with private money invested in a “first loss” position alongside public dollars.

In a recent discussion about the future of mortgage finance in the U.S. participants discussed the form this might take, and despite the calls by some in Congress for the Federal government to get out of the loan business it is clear that there is simply not enough private capital out there to fully fund a healthy U.S. housing market, and the public control of this funding is needed to assure the public and investors that we will not see a massive bubble as we experienced before.

Source: Nat’l Mortgage Pro

The CFPB is seeking to “lay the groundwork” for enforcement actions against lenders in the auto industry.  These lenders pay the dealerships that originate 80% of auto loans a markup, or bounty, for delivering the loan and there is substantial evidence the pricing of these loans is predatory.  In part this is evidence gathered by a study from the National Consumer Law Center.

{The] conclusions were stark: Among the more than 30 states studied, African-American and Latino car buyers paid higher interest rates than equally creditworthy white buyers, the NCLC declared. For white borrowers, the average markup above wholesale interest rates on GMAC loans was $245. For African-Americans it was $656, or 2.7 times higher.

The industry disputed the validity of the NCLC’s statistical methods but eventually agreed to pay about $100 million to settle the claims. It also agreed to temporarily cap the size of markups.

Source: American Banker

Today it was announced that about 1000 families from Philadelphia would be splitting $3.2 million from Wells Fargo for illegally steering them into sub-prime loans, with higher interest rates and risks of default.

Source: Metro.us