Showing posts with label farm credit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farm credit. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Discrimination in Lending Markets

 NYTimes reports on the Paycheck Protection Program, which it seems black business owners were more likely to get loans from online lenders than local banks. Although there's been publicity and concern about artificial intelligence algorithms being biased, apparently in these cases they may be less biased than the banks.  (The bias in algorithms would result from training the AI app using data which was produced by biased non-AI systems, like training an app to assess beauty by using pictures of whites.)

While the report described by the Times is on black businesses, it easily relates to black farmers, including som issues which I may have touched on in the past. Back in the dark ages of the New Deal the precursors of the Farmers Home Administration were authorized to fill a financing gap, to provide loans to farmers who were credit-worthy but had been unable to get loans from local banks. Even before then the Farm Credit system was set up in the Wilson administration for the same purpose. 

The Congressional Research Service has an overview of the farm credit situation.