The OCC's OCC press release called Spitzer's investigations to protect minorities from discrimination "disruptive." In early 2004 the OCC, which is part of the Treasury Department and is the chief regulator for any bank with "national" or "N.A." in its name, issued sweeping rules purporting to restrict all state legislative and enforcement authority over national banks and even their state-licensed operating subsidiaries. Our web site, OCC Watch, chronicles the OCC's abuses of power. The unelected bureaucrats at the OCC have for years failed to balance their regulatory responsibilities to bank customers with their wooing of banks to join their exclusive national bank club (weaker rules means more national banks means more regulatory fee income means bigger agency). OCC would rather use its authority to consolidate power in its fiefdom than to ensure that banks are competing fairly, not cheating consumers and not discriminating on the basis of race. The banks and OCC want a world without state legislators enacting predatory lending laws and without state attorney generals investigating unfair banking practices. Congress needs to step up and put the OCC back in its place, but since Congress is wooed by the same powerful banks, that's unlikely without continued exposure of the unfair and predatory bank practices that the OCC largely ignores but doesn't want others to even have the authority to investigate.