This book provides the most comprehensive examination of community reinvestment and fair lending problems and policies currently available. It outlines the history of lending discrimination and redlining in U.S. mortgage and small business lending markets, and documents the persistence of such problems today. The author explains the role that government has played in developing banking and credit markets in the United States, from the creation of Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States to the ongoing support government provides through the subsidization of secondary markets and through maintenance of critical regulatory infrastructure. Immergluck takes issue with those calling for deregulation of financial services - especially in the arena of fair lending and consumer protection - and gives new voice to rationales for social contract policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act. He provides new long-term analysis of the failure of federal bank regulators to enforce the CRA, and also shows how increased community activism and media attention have led to sporadic periods of stronger CRA enforcement. Finally, he recommends a number of policy changes that are needed to modernize the nation's fair lending and community reinvestment laws and make them more relevant for the 21st century.

"In Democratizing Capital, Professor Richard Marsico offers a bold proposal for improving the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law that has done more than any other to "democratize capital" by bringing under privileged people and neighbourhoods into the economic mainstream." "Democratizing Capital will be of interest to policymakers, bankers seeking to comply with the law, government officials seeking to enforce it, community groups seeking to increase lending in their neighbourhoods, students interested in learning about the CRA, and anyone else interested in low-income community economic development."--BOOK JACKET.