| Through Revolving Door Otting Out of
OCC Directly to Fintech Black Knight No
Cooling Off
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE / SDNY
COURT, June 8 – Only a week
ago, May 29 was the last day
for Joseph Otting as US
Comptroller of the Currency, a
position he has misused to
attack the Community
Reinvestment Act he came to
despise as head of OneWest
Bank.
Now a week
later Ottting has cashed out,
taking a paying position on
the board of directors of
Black Knight, described as a
fintech.
But if bank regulators
have a cooling off period, how
can the just former
Comptroller joint a fintech,
an industry he and his
successor worked and work to
get into the national banking
world? How much more corrupt
can Otting be? Watch this
site.
It
has not only been a policy
dispute. Under Otting, the OCC
immediately started denying
Freedom of Information Act fee
waivers, even for copies of
pending merger applications
subject to public comment. He
debased certain longtime OCC
staff, or perhaps they had
alwasy been ready to take this
turn. Time will tell.
Otting started
refusing to consider timely
comments on mergers, such as
the take-over of Chinatown FSB
by a national bank. Such
contempt for the public and
the public process is Otting's
legacy.
What will
change under Otting's
successor Brian P. Brooks?
Brooks was vice chair of
OneWest, before going to
FannieMae then CoinBase, which
he left only in March. Inner
City Press has heard a number
of things about Brooks, but as
always goes into it with an
open mind. Watch this site -
and this project:
Amid the COVID-19
pandemic, fair lending and
Community Reinvestment Act are
taking a back seat, or worse.
While Otting
pushed forward with his
proposal to weaken the CRA,
his new chief national bank
examiner Blake Paulson,
installed just before Otting
left, said bank examinations
have gone 95% off-site.
Fintechs and other non-bank
financial firms are now at the
PPP trough and are getting
sued. For example, there is
the lawsuit filed as a class
action against Fountainhead
Commercial Capital LLC on May
6, noting the finance firm
advertised that it would
process loan requests on a
first-come, first-served basis
and then stealthly shuffled
its line of PPP applicants so
that it would lock down the
largest lending fees first.
Meanwhile the OCC, which wants
to admit fintechs into banking
without regulation, says no
one is in PPP for the money.
This while in response to
Inner City Press' FOIA request
for Otting's schedule the OCC
redacted the names of banks
that he met without, and
obscured others. (A FOIA
appeal has been filed.)
Amid
all this, Fair Finance Watch
and Inner City Press /
Community on the Move are
launching a new project. And
so far, Otting's national
banks have been among the
worst. Watch this site.
***
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