Economy
Payday loan industry profits, fights regulation
Keith Epstein of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund provides an inside look at the tactics of the influential $42 billion-a-year payday lending industry, which is thriving from a surge in emergency loans to people struggling through the recession as it pours record sums into lobbying and campaigns. It’s getting results, too – most notably in…
Read MoreStimulus funds for renewable energy continue to flow overseas
Money from the 2009 stimulus bill to help support the renewable energy industry continues to flow overseas, despite Congressional criticism and calls for change, according to a new analysis of the program by the Investigative Reporting Workshop. The Workshop was the first to report last October that more than 80 percent of the first $1…
Read MoreFeds make collection firms open debt sale records
Isaac Wolf of Scripps Howard News Service in Washington reports that “federal authorities have issued a sweeping order for some of the nation’s largest debt-collecting companies to open their books. In its first investigation of the $60 billion consumer debt resale market, the Federal Trade Commission has directed the nine companies that buy the most second-hand…
Read MoreStimulus funds go to troubled corporations
Will Evans of California Watch found large corporations in California are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus dollars despite a history of environmental violations and a host of other legal problems.
Read MoreBank collapse exposed oversight and inspection problems
A two-part report by The Denver Post examines how the federal and state bank regulatory system collapsed in the last decade, failing to catch fraud at New Frontier Bank, one of the costliest bank failures in the country in 2009. A graphic depicts the red flags at New Frontier Bank, comparing performance data with other…
Read MoreTop subprime lender willingly pushed through fraudulent loans
The Huffington Post Investigative Fund exposes how lending practices at Washington Mutual’s subprime lender, Long Beach Mortgage, allowed fraud to run rampant. Former employees say efforts to stop fraudulent loan applications were commonly overridden and lavish commissions encouraged bad lending.
Read MoreStimulus loans scarce for minority-owned businesses
Aaron Glantz of New American Media reports that analysis of data from the federal government’s Small Business Association (SBA) revealed racial inequities in small business loans given out as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. While race is not recorded by Recovery.gov, data from the SBA found that 91 percent of the 4,497…
Read MoreDistribution of economic development loans questioned
The Buffalo News analyzed loans and grants data to see how the city “spends the federal funds it receives to promote economic development and urban renewal.” The analysis showed that two-thirds of the almost $2 million in grant money went to Masten District where the mayor used to serve as councilman. Other regions in need…
Read MoreGambling with state pension plan may cost state jobs, services
Mackenzie Ryan of the Statesman Journal (Salem, Ore.) recently investigated a new and controversial financial strategy in Oregon that attempts to lower a public agency’s pension system. The arbitrage strategy – where cities, school districts and the state issued bonds and then invested the money – made pension costs more volatile because “an agency’s pension…
Read MoreLoans brokered by nonprofits contributed to housing crisis
A review of government and court records by the Huffington Post Investigation Fund shows that two nonprofit groups worked closely with some of the nation’s biggest home builders to broker tens of billions of dollars in no-money-down mortgages. Now these loans are defaulting at up to three times the rate of other FHA loans, one…
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