As the House Financial Services Committee today considers the industry-backed Bean (D-IL) amendment to roll back proposed legislation, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act, that would reinstate federal bank laws as a floor not ceiling of protection, a new study documents that nationally-regulated banks were -- despite their claims to the contrary -- at the center of the system that failed and that any claimed increased cost of multiple state laws is small. The new report released by the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina documents the link between Federal preemption of state anti-predatory lending laws and the risky subprime mortgages that collapsed, triggering the foreclosure crisis. It also finds that national banks showed a marked increase in subprime lending following federal preemption which took full effect after 2004 actions of the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). (Our archival OCCWatch pages.)