Public Servants Meet a Lack of Services; Bank Regulators Tour Minority Neighborhoods to Gain Insight Into Problems
David Morgan, manager of a Citizens Bank branch in Capitol Heights, looked a bit startled as a serious-looking foursome, clad to a man in conservative pin stripes, climbed out of a dark blue government van and strode into his lobby yesterday.</br></br>"Skip Hove, chairman of the FDIC," said the first, extending a hand to Morgan. Another, Office of Thrift Supervision acting director Jonathan L. Fiechter, knew they looked a bit intimidating.</br></br>The four - the federal government's top bank regulators - weren't there to go over the bank's books, but to try to find out why bank services are scarce in many black communities, rich and poor.</br></br>Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Andrew C. Hove Jr., Fiechter, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene A. Ludwig and Federal Reserve Board Governor Lawrence B. Lindsey are used to worldly discussions of economics in sedate marbled chambers. But yesterday they went a few miles from their downtown Washington offices to a world where it costs $1.99 to cash a $25 check and 29-cent stamps cost 40 cents.</br></br>They were there to get a first-hand look at why working-class blacks on Central Avenue patronize expensive check cashing outfits instead of banks and why upper-middle-class blacks in $200,000 Lake Arbor town houses complain that they have to go to mortgage companies because banks won't lend to them.