The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [131]
75 The nine interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in 2001 did not affect most fixed-rate cards and had only modest effects on variable-rate cards. Cecily Fraser, “A $10 Billion Windfall: Credit Card Lenders Don’t Pass on Full Interest-Rate Cuts,” CBS MarketWatch.com, October 3, 2001. Available at http://www.cbs. marketwatch.com [2/2/2003].
76 Interest on so-called payday loans can be in the 300-1,000 percent range. FDIC, Payday Lending FYI: An Update on Emerging Issues in Bankruptcy (January 29, 2003).
77 Mansfield, “The Road to Subprime ‘HEL’,” pp. 492-495. The initial Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA), which allowed banks to pay higher interest to depositors and preempted state usury laws, passed the House on September 11, 1979, by a vote of 367 to 39, and passed the Senate on November 1, 1979, by a vote of 76 to 9. U.S. Library of Congress, Bill Summary and Status for the 96th Congress: H.R. 4986, Thomas Legislative Information on the Internet (1995). Available at http://thomas.loc.gov [3/3/2003].
78 Progressive reformers actually made the first major campaign to “democratize credit” in the early twentieth century. Calder, Financing the American Dream, pp. 124-155.
79 Even the most aggressive advocates of expanding home-ownership rates in America are beginning to call for reregulation of the mortgage market, recognizing that the impact on the number of families buying homes is likely to be small. National Training and Information Center, The Devil’s in the Details: An Analysis of Federal Housing Administration Default Concentration and Lender Performance in 20 U.S. Cities (Chicago: NTIC, October 1997). See also National Training and Information Center, Preying on Neighborhoods: Subprime Mortgage Lending and Chicagoland Foreclosures (Chicago: NTIC, September 21, 1999).
80 HUD, Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Housing Market Conditions, Historical Data, 3rd Quarter, 2002 (November 2002), Table 27, Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder, 1982-Present. Available at http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/ushmc/fall02/histdat27.htm [2/18/2003].
81 National Community Reinvestment Corporation, “About Us,” in NCRC.org (2002). Available at http://www.ncrc.org/about/aboutindex.html [2/2/2003]. (The organization’s primary mission is “to increase the flow of private capital into traditionally underserved communities.”)
82 “Federal Regulators Drop Subprime Proposal,” CardLine 3, no. 2 (January 10, 2003): 1.
83 Economist, “Hunting the Loan Sharks,” August 31, 2002.
84 Jeanette Bradley and Peter Skillern, “Predatory Lending: Subprime Lenders Trick Homeowners into Expensive Loans,” in the National Housing Institute’s Shelter Force Online, no. 109, January/February 2000.
85 To be fair, efforts to regulate predation are better than nothing. After North Carolina enacted some limits on predatory lending, at least one subprime lender left the state’s markets entirely and headed for easier pickings in other states. See Noel C. Paul, “Homeownership Can Be Short-lived in Inner Cities,” Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2001.
86 Hevesi, “A Wider Loan Pool.”
87 There have been numerous private efforts to bring lower-cost capital to underserved communities. See, for example, Woodstock Institute, Doing Well While Doing Good, Reinvestment Alert Number 18 (Chicago: Woodstock Institute, September 2002). Available at http://www.woodstockinst.org/alert18.pdf [3/22/03].
88 Democratic National Committee, The 2000 Democratic Party Platform: Prosperity, Progress, and Peace (Washington, DC: DNC, 2000). Available at http://www.democrats.org/about/2000platform.html [2/2/2003]. Republican National Committee, Republican Platform 2000: Renewing America’s Purpose, Together (Washington, DC: RNC, 2000). Available at http://www.rnc.org/gopinfo.platform [2/2/2003].
89 Ellis, “The Effect of Consumer Interest Rate Deregulation.”
90 National Bankruptcy Review Commission, Bankruptcy: The Next Twenty Years. Final Report (Washington, DC, 1997): 77-95 (NBRC Report). For the reasons families file for bankruptcy, see