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.

This handbook provides an overview and analysis of state-of-the-art research in banking written by researchers in the field. It includes abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner and policy-related material.

As communities face a variety of economic challenges, some are looking to local banks and financial institutions for solutions that address the specific development needs of low-income and distressed communities. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) provide financial products and services, such as mortgage financing for homebuyers and not-for-profit developers, underwriting and risk capital for community facilities; technical assistance; and commercial loans and investments to small, start-up, or expanding businesses. CDFIs include regulated institutions, such as community development banks and credit unions, and non-regulated institutions, such as loan and venture capital funds. This book describes the Fund's history, current appropriations, and each of its programmes.

In many rich democracies, access to financial markets is now a prerequisite for fully participating in labor and housing markets and pursuing educational opportunities. Indebted Societies introduces a new social policy theory of everyday borrowing to examine how the rise of credit as a private alternative to the welfare state creates a new kind of social and economic citizenship. Andreas Wiedemann provides a rich study of income volatility and rising household indebtedness across OECD countries. Weaker social policies and a flexible knowledge economy have increased costs for housing, education, and raising a family - forcing many people into debt. By highlighting how credit markets interact with welfare states, the book helps explain why similar groups of people are more indebted in some countries than others. Moreover, it addresses the fundamental question of whether individuals, states, or markets should be responsible for addressing socio-economic risks and providing social opportunities.

Photojournalists are trained to scout important events, capture mood and emotion, predict peak action, and create images that, in an instant, tell a compelling and memorable story. In this book, award-winning photojournalist Paula Ferazzi Swift (from Framingham, MA) shows readers how she adapted her photojournalistic approach to create a thriving family portrait business. In an increasingly competitive market, professional portrait photographers need to hone their skills to capture heirloom-quality images that are a step above the rest. With the tips in this book, readers will learn how to use — or cultivate — a photojournalist’s precision capture skills to chronicle family moments that matter. Ferazzi Swift offers ideas for creating a strong and lasting client connection, eliciting memorable moments, finding storytelling locations, inspiring natural action and reactions, and capturing the inter-relationships between siblings and between children and their parents. Armed with the skills in this book, photographers will be able to capture more genuine, charming, memorable, and expressive portraits that truly depict the family’s interests, the subject’s personalities, milestone moments, meaningful locations, and the unique bond the family shares.

By supplying small entrepreneurs with necessary capital to start and expand their businesses, Jewish loan societies facilitated the rise up the economic ladder of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jews. These collective institutions were an important feature of a cohesive ethnic economy in which Jewish factory owners hired Jewish workers, Jewish retailers bought goods from Jewish wholesalers, and Jewish shopkeepers relied on Jewish loan associations for funding. A Credit to Their Community is a sociohistorical study of Jewish credit organizations from the 1880s until the end of World War II. Upon their arrival in the United States during this critical period in American Jewish life, Eastern European Jewish immigrants established hundreds of loan societies in communities as diverse as Nashville, Tennessee; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Rock Island, Illinois; and Portland, Oregon. While there is ample discussion and documentation of the over-representation of Jewish immigrants in business, until now the question of how these immigrant entrepreneurs raised the necessary funds to start their enterprises has not been addressed. Based on primary historical documents, this book analyzes the emergence, growth, and subsequent decline of three types of Jewish loan associations in America: Hebrew free loan societies; remedial loan associations—philanthropic loan societies that charged relatively low interest fees; and credit cooperatives. The author addresses a number of issues related to the functioning of the Jewish credit organizations, including the activities of women's loan associations, debates about whether or not to open doors to non-Jewish borrowers, discussions about the merits and faults of implementing interest charges, the effects of the Great Depression on loan organizations, and the relations between free loan Societies and other Jewish organizations. While the primary focus is on Jews, the text also offers comparisons between Jewish loan societies and those of other enterprising groups such as the Japanese and Chinese. This study raises an important theoretical question in the field of ethnicity; namely, to what extent are ethnic institutions influenced by culture—cultural traits brought from countries of origin—and to what extent do they emerge as responses to the new context to which immigrants have arrived? In answering this question, Dr. Tenenbaum highlights the importance of both cultural and contextual factors for the emergence of Jewish loan associations.