The Wealth Effects of OCC Preemption Announcements After the Passage of the Georgia Fair Lending Act

Download or read book The Wealth Effects of OCC Preemption Announcements After the Passage of the Georgia Fair Lending Act written by Gary Whalen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rapid growth in subprime lending over the past decade has led to rising concerns about abusive practices by subprime lenders. By early 2004, those concerns prompted Georgia and more than 30 other states to pass laws designed to eliminate abusive or predatory lending practices by the financial services firms, including those with federal charters, operating within their boundaries. In 2003, the OCC concluded that federal law preempts the provisions of the Georgia Fair Lending Act (GFLA) that would otherwise affect national banks' real estate lending. In early 2004, the OCC adopted a final rule providing that state laws that regulate the terms of credit are preempted. The OCC has asserted that the growing number of state anti-predatory lending laws impose substantial compliance costs on banks, especially smaller, multistate banking organizations that must spread them over smaller levels of output. If these arguments are correct, preemption should reduce expected costs, increase expected revenue, and boost expected bank profitability, especially for smaller banking firms with multistate operations. Opponents of preemption have argued that material preemption benefits for national banks imply a significant competitive disadvantage for state banks and could induce enough state bank charter conversions to endanger the dual banking system.