U.S.

 U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: President Clinton urges greater economic opportunity, fewer predatory practices  Receive E-mail Updates
 State AL AK AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA PR RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VI VT WA WI WV WY

Issues  (Related) News  (Related) Reports  (Related) How You Can Help  (Related) Results  (Related) About U.S. PIRG  (Related) U.S. PIRG Education Fund  (Related) Jobs  (Related) 

U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog  (Related)  U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog

« PIRG RELEASE: Senate Passage of FDA/Rx Reform  (Related)   |

Main  (Related) 

 May 11, 2007

 President Clinton urges greater economic opportunity, fewer predatory practices

 Last night, after a two-hour weather-caused flight delay, President William Jefferson Clinton finally joined his fellow honorees, the historian John Hope Franklin and Iraq War veteran L. Tammy Duckworth, at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights'  (Related)   (LCCR) annual Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award Dinner. Hundreds of us had waited (it wasn't hard as the LCCR brought up some powerful witnesses to history for impromptu speeches to fill in the time). In his acceptance speech, the former President urged the completion of Nobel Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King's  (Related)   call for an end to the barrier that is a lack of economic opportunity. Clinton specifically condemned the impact on minorities and all Americans of a wide variety of "toxic" predatory loan practices from unfair subprime mortgages to payday loans and refund anticipation loans and even their variant, the paystub loan. He said that these Americans have worked an "extra two weeks each year" to pay unfair fees that they cannot afford. He also called for more banks to work harder to solve the cost (costs of entry to the bank system are too high) and presence (there are no banks where many people live) barriers facing the 28 million unbanked Americans. He urged more banks to follow the lead of the (labor-founded) Amalgamated Bank, which recently opened a branch  (Related)   in an under-served area of Queens, NY. He told the story of one of the latest Nobel Laureates, economist Muhammad Yunus  (Related)  , and his Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and their successful micro-loans to the poor. And finally, in calling for a commitment to a "clean, independent energy future," he said that greater emphasis on "green buildings" would also help create jobs, because you "cannot outsource green roofs to India because somebody's got to be up on the roof."

 Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at May 11, 2007 07:43 AM

 Post a comment

 Name:

 Email
Address:

 URL:

 
Remember Me?
 Yes No

 Comments:

 218
D. Street, SE Washington, DC 20003

 
Phone (202) 546-9707

 E-mail: