More CRA Grade Inflation at the OCC

Minutes ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency demonstrated once again why no one takes their CRA exams very seriously.

The OCC released evaluations for 27 banks.  All of the evaluations were made from October 15th through November 14th.  No banks were given any grades that would reflect shortcomings in service, lending, or investment to their local areas.  Twenty-five passed, and two passed with “outstanding” colors.

How good is an “outstanding?”  Well, the people who run your credit card are apparently doing an outstanding job at making you happy.  Citibank (South Dakota) NA received an outstanding.  Did they do an outstanding job? Sure, maybe they are charging millions of Americans up to 29.9 percent on their credit card debt, but they did it well, right?

Drilling down to Citibank’s evaluation, it is easy to see some of the reasons for why the CRA needs to be (more…)