R. C. Morgan El Paso, Texas Mr. Morgan is president of the Government Employees Credit Union of El Paso. He is immediate past vice chairman of the National Legislative Forum and chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Credit Union National Association. He served three terms as president of that Association. He has served as a member and as chairman of the Credit Union Advisory Commission for the State of Texas and as a member of the Texas Credit Union Commission. He has testified on consumer protection issues before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and regulatory agencies. Reece A. Overcash Dallas, Texas Mr. Overcash is president and chief operating officer of Associates Corporation of North America. He has served as president of the National Consumer Finance Association and formerly served on the board of directors of the North Carolina Economic Resources Association. He has taught at the National Institute of Consumer Finance at Marquette University and the National Instalment Banking School at the University of Colorado. Raymond J. Saulnier New York City, New York Mr. Saulnier is professor emeritus of economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is a former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and a former director of the Financial Research Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he was responsible for studies of consumer instalment credit. He has written extensively in the field of consumer instalment credit. E. G. Schuhart Dalhart, Texas Mr. Schuhart, a farmer and rancher, has served as vice-chairman and member of the Federal Farm Credit Board (policy-making board for the Farm Credit System). He has also been a member of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee for the State of Texas and mayor of the City of Dalhart, Texas. He has been a director of the Farm Credit Board of Houston and a chairman and member of the stockholders' committee of the Federal Land Bank of Houston. He was formerly manager of the Schuhart Grain James E. Sutton Dallas, Texas Mr. Sutton is Secretary and Corporate Counsel of Chilton Corporation. Before joining Chilton in 1973, Mr. Sutton served three years as staff attorney and consumer education consultant in the Texas State Consumer Credit Commission. While in that office, he was charged with enforcing the Texas Credit Code and worked closely with the Federal Truth in Lending Act. Mr. Sutton was also engaged in consumer education programs and participated in the establishment of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Dallas and Family Debt Counselors of Corpus Christi. Anne Gary Taylor Ms. Taylor is a former national president of the American Association of University Women. For 21 years she was president of Sweet Briar College. She has served on the American Council on Education, and was vice-chairman of the Board, and a member of the Commission on Students and Faculty of the Association of American Colleges. She was one of four educational administrators who arranged for the establishment of the United States-India Women' 8 Colleges Faculty Exchange Program. Richard D. Wagner Simsbury, Connecticut He is a Mr. Wagner is president of Wagner Ford Sales, Incorporated. member of the board of directors of the National Automobile Dealers' Association and is chairman of the Association's Public and Consumer Affairs Committee and director of the Association for the State of Connecticut. He established the Connecticut Automotive Consumer Action Panel Program (AUTOCAP). Richard L. Wheatley, Jr. Stillwater, Oklahoma Mr. Wheatley is chairman and chief executive officer of the University Bank at Stillwater. He was the first Administrator of Consumer Affairs for the State of Oklahoma after the State enacted the Uniform Consumer Credit Code, and served as a representative in the State legislature. He has served as consultant with some 30 other State legislatures regarding enactment of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code in those states. 80-991 - 77 - 3 I am pleased to respond to your letter of November 29 in which you ask certain follow-up questions in connection with my testimony at your recent oversight hearings on Regulations B and C. You inquire whether the Board is considering the development of case studies to assist examiners in finding possible discriminatory practices by lenders. Such studies have been prepared in a joint effort with the Comptroller of the Currency. I am enclosing a set of the case studies and other materials that have been used in two special training sessions on consumer regulations that the Board has conducted recently for bank examiners. You also request certain clarifications of the Board's response to a question in your letter of November 8 regarding "informal conferences" between examiners and bank management. Such conferences are simply meetings at which matters of interest or concern to either party may be discussed. The meetings are most often held in conjunction with a scheduled examination, but they may be called at any time they are felt to be desirable by an examiner or bank management. An informal meeting might be called, for example, if a bank's response to a civil rights questionnaire of the type that was appended to my testimony indicated a lack of reasonable familiarity with the law or the possibility of some discriminatory lending practices by the bank. As you suggest, these conferences are used to instruct banks or to request changes in certain practices in order to "prevent" discrimination in the future. Our analysis of The Honorable William Proxmire Page Two instances of discrimination. Supervisory follow-up took the form of interim reports from bank management and verification of the fulfillment of management's commitments at succeeding examinations. In connection with Regulation B you ask whether it would be helpful to require lenders to tabulate the data collected on race, sex, marital status, and age. While the Board has the principal rule-writing authority under the Act, responsibility for enforcement is divided among twelve regulatory agencies. The Board believes that each regulatory agency ought to determine how to use the data collected by the institutions under its jurisdiction. Uniform collection and examination techniques may eventually emerge, but we do not think that collection requirements should be imposed by the Board at this time. In this connection, I would also point out that Regulation B applies to all creditors, not merely to depository institutions. While tabulation might be useful at depository institutions which are examined regularly by the financial regulatory agencies, other creditors ordinarily are not examined on a regular basis. Thus it seems unnecessary to impose the burden of tabulating data on all creditors. In the event of a lawsuit or an enforcement action against a particular creditor, such data would be available in accordance with the recordkeeping requirements of the regulation and could be tabulated at that time. Finally, you ask whether it would be preferable to spell out in precise terms what practices are prima facie unlawful under the effects test. The Board has given serious consideration to a "laundry list" approach. The problem with such an approach is that credit criteria or standards which might be legal when used by one creditor might be illegal if used by another creditor. Furthermore, any attempt to furnish a list would be likely to omit important factors. We believe it is better for all creditors to reexamine all of their credit criteria and attempt to remove every illegally discriminatory factor. I hope this information will be helpful to you. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance. Enclosure Sincerely, "Jaron Philip C. Jackson, Jr. i The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Governor Jackson. STATEMENT OF GARTH MARSTON, ACTING CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL Mr. MARSTON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Senator Garn, you have asked us to comment on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and our activities regarding compliance with the fair housing laws. As I indicated earlier, we handed you a letter on Friday night with more detail on your questions. I'd like to give you a brief opening statement to highlight our response. First, as to the ECOA, as Governor Jackson indicated, these regulations are being promulgated by the Fed. We have commented to them. We sent you a copy of our letter to Chairman Burns. It is our belief that a simple-underlined-simple notation requirement should enhance our examination abilities. The Board believes this and our examination staff believes this. We have improved substantially our staff seminars that we give on a continuing basis to our examiners. Mr. Chairman, we invite you, any member of the committee or any member of any of your staffs to attend those seminars. We are looking for constructive suggestions. As you may know, we have had somebody from the Justice Department spend time with us. We are looking for constructive help any place we can get it. Further, Mr. Chairman, if the Fed for some reason does not promulgate the regulations-we believe that they will-and if for some reason HUD doesn't, it is our feeling at the moment that we probably will promulgate some regulations on our own to affect the people that we supervise. Second, regarding the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the compliance so far appears to be good. There have been a small number of complaints. We investigated the 7 complaints out of the some 30 or 32 that were handed to us by an organization. Of those, it turned out that six were in substantial compliance. The seventh had a computer breakdown and as soon as their figures were available they made them available. It was their intent to comply to the law. We have a couple now in the mill that we are investigating. Further, I want to tell you that I have alerted our principal supervisory agents and the Bank chairman, who are appointed directors, as to the importance of this and asked them to be especially alert in their districts for complaints. Our examiners will follow through and we are sure that interested citizens and the media will, as usual, be the best regulators in this regard. Third, as to the aggregating of the data for the 30-largest SMSA's, we have some questions, as your staff knows, as to the costs, as to the deadline imposed, as to the problems that Governor Jackson indicated, as to the comparability of the data, and the 4 exception states which have about 11 of the 30 SMSA's and about 50 percent of the volume. So we have some questions as to the use or the value of the data when it's completed. However, we continue to work with the FDIC and members of your |