Smoking gun: White House, Press briefing (August 1993, re CRA reform, forcing subprime lending)
In July the President asked the four banking regulators to reform CRA, to reduce paperwork in process and reward performance, and to get that done by January 1, 1994. We’re delighted to report that that has been accomplished on schedule. And in conjunction with the President’s Community Development Bank and financial institution legislation, which recently passed the House of Representatives, CRA reform will generate billions of dollars in new lending and extend basic banking services to the inner cities and to distressed rural communities around the country.
In a nutshell, what we’re proposing to do is to make it easier for lenders to show how they’re complying with the Community Reinvestment Act. For those who aren’t familiar with the area of banking law, the changes we’re proposing are important because banks now have a very clear, quantitative standard by which their compliance can be judged. And that is very important to banks when it comes to ask regulators to approve mergers, new branches and the like.