Stealth bank bans: operation choke point.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

The Justice Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) have been exploiting a secretive federal anti-fraud initiative to deter banks from doing business with disfavored industries, such as payday lending, a December report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found.

The program, called Operation Choke Point, was supposed to be targeted at reducing banking fraud. But internal documents showed regulators taking advantage of a lack of due process to squelch a variety of legitimate transactions by legal but potentially unsavory businesses.

One of the most striking documents released by the committee was this comment in an email from the head of the FDIC in Atlanta: "I literally can not stand payday lending. They are abusive, fundamentally wrong, hurt people, and do not in any way deserve to be...