[CircleUp] Native Efforts Mentioned, EITC: Minneapolis Fed Releases e-Edition of Community Dividend

[Info]

e-Edition, March 2009 

The Community Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
has released an online-only edition of Community Dividend featuring articles
that touch on two timely topics: the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis
and the development of alternatives to costly refund anticipation loans.  To
read more, visit our
<http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/issue.cfm?id=293> Current
Issues page or click on one of the headlines below. 

 <http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4136>
Did the CRA cause the mortgage market meltdown? 
The Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, requires banks to help meet the
credit needs of all communities in their service areas, including low- and
moderate-income communities.  Critics contend that the CRA spawned the
subprime mortgage crisis by pushing banks to make high-risk mortgage loans
to low- and moderate-income borrowers.  In the first of our online-only
features, two Federal Reserve economists explore whether the available data
support the critics' claims. 

 <http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4155>
Strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit: Alternatives to refund
anticipation loans 
Every year at tax time, millions of low-income workers take out refund
anticipation loans, or RALs, in order to receive their federal tax refunds a
little sooner.  Unfortunately, the high fees and interest rates associated
with RALs can cancel out a hefty portion of those refunds and reduce the
benefits of antipoverty measures like the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Learn
about a collaborative effort in the Ninth Federal Reserve District to create
an alternative RAL that gives workers fast access to tax refunds at little
cost. 

 

 

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