to improve its brand by securing naming rights to the Viking Stadium.
http://www.startribune.com/with-name-on-new-vikings-stadium-u-s-bank-s-visibility-grows/308527091/
Didn't they just have to pay $200 million by racist lending practices?
From Department of Justice, Justice News, June 30, 2014:
U.S. Bank to Pay $200 Million to Resolve Alleged FHA Mortgage Lending
Violations
U.S. Bank has agreed to pay the United States $200 million to resolve
allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly originating and
underwriting mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
that did not meet applicable requirements, the Justice Department announced
today.
“By misusing government programs designed to maintain and expand homeownership,
U.S. Bank not only wasted taxpayer funds, but inflicted harm on homeowners and
the housing market that lasts to this day,” said Assistant Attorney General for
the Justice Department’s Civil Division Stuart F. Delery. “As this settlement
shows, we will continue to hold accountable financial institutions that violate
the law by pursuing their own financial interests at the expense of hardworking
Americans.”
and wasn't U S Bank part of the $200 million settlement between HUD and
Associated Bank of Wisconsin for redlining in minority neighborhoods?
and wasn't U S Bank one of the mortgage lenders that Myron Orfield said
redlined Minneapolis neighborhoods? From the Strib: April 9, 2014:
"The study, using data from 2009 to 2012, focused more on general patterns than
on particular bank activity. But it notes that Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bank,
the two largest banks in Minnesota, would have made an additional 4,200 and
1,200 mortgage loans, respectively, in racially diverse and mostly nonwhite
Twin Cities neighborhoods during that period if they had distributed their
loans proportionally to the distribution of homeowners with various incomes
across the region."
People in Minnesota may feel superior to our white brothers and sisters in
South Carolina who fly a Confederate flag by the State Capitol, but we are
enshrining institutional racism by naming a sports stadium, built with hundreds
of millions of taxpayer's dollars, after a bank that has been found guilty of
destroying minority communities with racist lending practices.
Zygi Wilf has been called a racketeer by a New Jersey judge. U S Bank has been
judged racist and predatory.
I would hope our elected officials would condemn the naming of this stadium for
a racist institution with the same zeal they condemn the flying of a
Confederate Flag.