#office of comptroller of the currency

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stinkpump Linkdump

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b

Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):

https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech

When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:

https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html

That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies

Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331

There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop

Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:

https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/

As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.

This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.

What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/

Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html

Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.

But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media

Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.

I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?

Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."

This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats

Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/

But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.

One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews

Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org

Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."

Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":

https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/

Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.

It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html

The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.

But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.

That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1

Stinkpump Linkdump

[jeromepowell]

Explanation in the tags if you feel so inclined.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The federal agency overseeing the country’s largest banks has hired its first climate cop.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced on Monday that Yue Chen would be the agency’s chief climate risk officer. Dr. Chen will focus on developing a new system to assess climate-driven risks to banks, and figure out how to monitor and manage them, the agency said in a statement.

Climate change, including global warming and increasingly severe and unpredictable weather events, makes it harder for banks to figure out how much money to lend to real estate and business deals, and how to price those loans. Advocates of climate-driven financial oversight say that a catastrophic weather event that caused larger-than-expected losses to banks could threaten the stability of the financial system.

The move to integrate concerns about climate change into financial regulation has been largely driven by Democratic lawmakers, who have for years been warning about the dangers climate change poses to markets. At the beginning of his term, President Biden assembled an expansive team of climate experts inside the White House.

Last year, the O.C.C. designated one of its bank supervisors to serve as a climate risk officer to urge banks to consider climate risks in their daily operations. Dr. Chen’s role is an expansion of that. She will oversee the regulator’s office of climate risk and report directly to the O.C.C.’s leader. The agency is run by Michael Hsu, the acting comptroller.

[don-lichterman]

Lake Shore Bancorp cited by regulators for technology, governance issues | Business Local

Lake Shore Bancorp cited by regulators for technology, governance issues | Business Local

One of the region’s smaller banks, Lake Shore Bancorp, has been slapped with a regulatory order from a federal agency, criticizing its technology compliance and governance – and questioning if its management is up to the task – after it suffered a data breach in its internal systems last November. That’s despite the bank continuing to be profitable, even posting a 70% increase in second-quarter…

[workersolidarity]

Cash App has stolen an entire paycheck of mine, I have no access to my money, they refuse to make it available to me, refuse to cancel the deposit so I can take my money elsewhere, and even refuse to allow me to close my account.

When I file a complaint, they respond with a pre-prepared statement about money availability, before they immediately end the conversation.

When I call to file a complaint, they hang up on me.

I've filed complaints with the BBB, CFPB, Office of Comptroller of the Currency and my State AG.

Amazing a company can steal an entire paycheck from me and then proceed to completely ghost me.

Capitalism working beautifully for the masses...

[brostateexam]

The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) is investigating stablecoin issuer Paxos, CoinDesk has learned.

The full scope of the investigation is unclear. Paxos’ stablecoins include the Pax dollar (USDP) and Binance USD (BUSD), a Binance-branded stablecoin offered through a white-label service.

A NYDFS spokesperson said the agency could not comment on ongoing investigations.

Paxos has been in the news recently over rumors the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – a federal bank regulator – may ask it to withdraw its application for a full banking charter. Paxos has denied these rumors.

However, an ongoing investigation by a state regulator suggests the company, which received a provisional bank charter from the OCC in 2021, is indeed under closer scrutiny than its peers may be.

[follow-up-news]

Bank of America, the nation's second largest bank, has been ordered to pay more than $100 million to customers for double charging insufficient fund fees, withholding reward bonuses and opening accounts without customers' knowledge or permission. The bank is also on the hook for an additional $150 million in penalties for the same violations. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Tuesday that an investigation found that Bank of America harmed hundreds of thousands of customers across multiple product lines over a period of several years through a series of illegal practices. As a result, Bank of America was ordered to pay over $100 million to customers and another $90 million in penalties. A separate $60 million fine has been ordered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for violating laws around overdraft fees. CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a news release that Bank of America's double-dipping on fees, opening accounts without customer consent and withholding rewards "are illegal and undermine customer trust," practices he said the CFPB will put an end to across the banking system.

[dwagom]

(...) Stablecoins are a modern form of the wildcat banks of the 1800s, which issued dubious paper dollars backed with questionable reserves. These led to the National Currency Act of 1863, establishing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and taking away the power of commercial banks to issue paper notes. At the very least, stablecoins need to be as regulated as banks are. But all of cryptocurrency is a less robust version of existing systems and has any advantage only as long as it gets away without being properly regulated. (...)

You might be asking why either UST or luna is worth anything in the first place, given they were created ex nihilo by Terra. But the cryptocurrency bubble has been so full of irrational exuberance that a token created yesterday can claim to be worth something just for existing, and you can pay people in your made-up token.

Neither UST nor luna is really priced in dollars; they’re priced in other illiquid tokens, which are priced in other illiquid tokens, which are priced in ethers (the native currency of the ethereum blockchain), which are priced in dollars. There was never $18 billion in dollars, or even in ethers. There is only a long, multiply leveraged chain of alleged pricing for two made-up assets. Every time you see a headline claim of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency, those are not in any way actual realizable dollars—there’s no real market liquidity. But the market accepted this barely backed coin as being worth a dollar because the belief would let traders make money for a time. (...)

Plenty of pain is out there, but the real danger is contagion from cryptocurrency to the wider economy. U.S. regulators have long worried about stablecoins. The Trump administration made rules to mitigate the money-laundering risk from stablecoins in December 2020. The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets cautioned in December 2021 that “the mere prospect of a stablecoin not performing as expected could result in a ‘run’ on that stablecoin. … A run occurring under strained market conditions may have the potential to amplify a shock to the economy and the financial system.”

The Federal Reserve’s May 2022 Financial Stability Report compared the risks of stablecoins to those of the money market funds that played such a critical part in the 2008 crash. The day after UST’s collapse, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reported to the Senate for the Financial Stability Oversight Council and mentioned UST as an example of the potential issues with stablecoins.

The cryptocurrency industry has persistently tried to worm its way into systemically risky corners of the economy. The Labor Department warned financial advisors and other fiduciaries this March that their licenses may be at risk if they put cryptocurrency into 401(k) retirement plans. Fidelity Investments is still attempting to put cryptocurrencies into its 401(k) product for employers anyway. The Labor Department and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith have asked Fidelity to explain why it is offering such incredibly risky assets as long-term retirement plans, as well as the company’s conflict of interest in promoting an investment it has such a strong position in.

Cryptocurrency trading throws around alleged millions and billions. Those numbers are fictions built on fictions, with a much smaller—but still real—amount of actual money at the bottom. The gateways to genuine dollars are narrow and have yet to be significantly breached. But that’s not for lack of effort from the cryptocurrency world, whose endgame appears to be to make cryptocurrency systemic and leave the government as the bag-holder of last resort when the tottering heaps of leverage fall down. It worked in 2008, after all.

emphases in bold text mine

[james-kedze67]

Report: Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Arm Under Probe By Regulators

Morgan Stanley’s wealth management arm is being probed by multiple regulators, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited people familiar with the matter. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and other Treasury Department offices are involved, the report said. Regulators are assessing whether the […]Report: Morgan Stanley’s…

[isacopraxolu]

JPMorgan multata per 348 milioni di dollari dalle autorità americane #tfnews #14marzo

[truthblockchain]

Blockchain Companies Positioning Themselves As Data Tools For Chain Analysis

It appears Crystal is positioning itself in anticipation of more demand by regulators for data tools as a result of the recent spot bitcoin ETF.

“As we continue to see adoption grow, we are committed to leveraging new-age tech to stay ahead of the curve. Regulators need superior intelligence and cutting-edge tools to navigate these changes, and TradFi institutions are seeking to manage risks effectively as they enter the digital assets market,” Gupta said.

Brian Brooks, Bitfury board member and former head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, maintains that the recent bitcoin ETF launch will supercharge the further adoption of crypto, as well as a need to track bad actors and crypto-related crime.

“Recent developments like the Bitcoin ETF approval have set the stage both for an increased appetite for digital assets and for compliance tools to keep pace with regulatory expectations,” said Brooks in the statement.

Former CEO Marina Khaustova will become a chief operating officer “co-piloting” with Gupta, she told The Block in a written comment.

[visbankingnews]

Banking Groups Sue to Block New CRA Rules

A group of industry organizations have filed suit to block regulators’ new Community Reinvestment Act rules. According to the plaintiffs in the case, regulators are exceeding their authority with the proposed rules. Additionally, the plaintiffs argue that the new CRA rules conflict with the statutory language of the CRA. The plaintiff groups include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the American Bankers Association. The suit, filed in Texas, names the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as defendants. What are the new CRA rules designed to achieve? Regulators confirmed the new CRA rules in October 2023. The government claimed that the new interpretation of the CRA was part of a modernization effort for banking regulation. Specifically, agencies say that the rule modifications will help them properly regulate banks’ online and mobile application banking services. Notably, regulators say they need the rules to deter redlining and other lending discrimination. According to the government, rule changes are needed to ensure that lenders provide fair services to low-income borrowers. In their suit, the plaintiffs claim that the new rules are more likely to reduce lending to those customers, thanks to higher costs imposed on lenders. Pushing back on regulators The last three years have seen an increase in the banking sector's attempts to push back on growing regulation. Traditionally, the industry has tried to work with agencies to avoid tension. However, the current government's posture toward the industry has already been tense, with agencies seeking ever broader powers over the sector. The ABA released a statement announcing the new CRA rules lawsuit, noting that "ABA and our co-plaintiffs will call on the court to immediately intervene and issue a preliminary injunction that will prevent the new rules from taking effect. In addition, the plaintiffs ask the court to issue an order and judgment setting aside the CRA rules as illegal or impermissible.” Related Articles: - Bank Capital Rule Changes Proposed by U.S. Regulators - Class Action Suit Alleges BofA Misled Paycheck Protection Program Borrowers - FinCEN Alert Warns About Russian Attempts to Use Real Estate Investments to Evade Sanctions - SBA Fintech Proposal Meets Pushback from Bank Trade Group - Regulators Propose Stricter Long-Term Debt Issuance Rules for Regional Banks Read the full article

[cavenewstimes]

Exclusive-US regulator probes banks' climate risk planning

More Sign In/Free Sign Up 0 3/3 © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A view of sign board warning of extreme heat in Death Valley, California, U.S. July 15, 2023. REUTERS/Jorge Garcia//File Photo 2/3 By Isla Binnie and Chris Prentice (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) carried out its first climate risk assessment of more than two dozen banks in recent…

[massispost]

New Post has been published on https://massispost.com/2023/12/rep-schiff-leads-letter-to-comptroller-hsu-demanding-accountability-from-citibank-for-discriminating-against-armenian-customers/

Rep. Schiff Leads Letter to Comptroller Hsu Demanding Accountability from Citibank for Discriminating Against Armenian Customers

CitiBank Recently Ordered to Pay $26 Million Fine by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, But Members Pushing for Further Accountability WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of Currency’s Acting Comptroller Michael J. Hsu to demand answers and further accountability from CitiBank for their recent discrimination against Armenian credit card customers. “We write today regarding disturbing reports of Citigroup Inc. (Citi)’s discriminatory lending practices against Armenian Americans. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Citi deliberately targeted and denied Armenian American credit card applicants based on their surnames and…

[sutrala]

Big banks such as PNC Bank and JPMorgan Chase have filed to close several branch offices in multiple states amid a troubling pattern of rising branch shutdowns in recent years. Between Nov. 12 and 18, several banks filed to close branch locations, with PNC Bank with the most...