Wells Fargo, Minnesota’s second-largest employer, holds the title of the largest financial institution in the state. The banking giant has what it calls banking stores (180 in Minnesota), mortgage stores and financial stores dotting every area of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. But Wells Fargo also holds another title: the institution most likely to target minorities with high-cost (subprime) loans, regardless of income.

In fact, in a multi-state study last year by a variety of nonpartisan organizations, data indicated that Wells Fargo was 10 times more likely to sell a high-cost loan to African-American borrowers than whites. In Chicago, the city to suffer from the biggest racial disparities, 35 percent of African-Americans received high-cost loans (again, regardless of income) versus only 2.5 percent of whites. And how did the nefarious Countrywide Financial fare in this study? That financial institution had an African-American/white disparity ratio of 4.9, or half of that of Wells Fargo.

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