It’s not uncommon for people who want to start businesses in lower-income neighborhoods to have trouble getting bank loans. But increasingly, there are investors looking specifically to help businesses in those areas, with the aim of reversing the cycle of disinvestment.

“There’s always reasons to say no to a borrower. We are looking for reasons to say yes,” says Lauren Grattan, a founder of the San Diego-based investment company Mission Driven Finance. She explained that her company doesn’t look at personal credit scores. “We instead look at the validity of the business and how well can you repay from the business earnings.”

Her company’s goal is to fill the gap between more traditional profit-motivated investing and philanthropy that focuses on economic development.

One business that could have used help like this is Project Reo Collective, a coffee shop in Paradise Hills, a lower-income neighborhood of San Diego.

The coffee shop is situated in a small strip mall near a Mexican restaurant and a cell phone store. On most days, the cafe is filled with people working on laptops or hanging out while drinking Mexican mochas or lavender lemonades.

“Project Reo Collective started out as five families who got together … cleaning up the neighborhood here,” says Tommy Walker, one of the owners. “A lot of people in the neighborhood said, ‘We wish we had somewhere to hang out, somewhere we grab a cup of coffee, meet our neighbors, do some homework or study.’ “

Walker says that after a successful first year, he went to a bank asking to borrow $4,000 for an espresso machine. But, he didn’t have any luck.

“They said, ‘No, you guys don’t qualify because you haven’t been around long enough,’ ” he says.

A problem of disinvestment

Having trouble getting a small-business loan like this is typical, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Woodstock Institute in a report titled “Patterns of Disparity.” It shows that between 2012 and 2016, only about one in five businesses in low-income areas across the United States received bank loans or even business credit cards. That’s compared with almost three in five businesses in higher-income areas.

“You have a cycle that kind of perpetuates that neighborhood being less friendly to business,” says Spencer Cowan, the researcher who compiled the data. “Businesses don’t get started. So employment stays depressed. The job opportunities aren’t there in the neighborhood. Businesses that are there don’t expand.”

He says it can also drive businesses to predatory lending.

That’s what happened to Natalie Gill. After running her flower-arranging business out of her home, she wanted to expand to a flower shop and cafe called Native Poppy.

“I had two years of experience with profit, but I got rejected for every loan I tried for,” she says.

A normal small-business loan has 5 to 10 percent interest, but she took a loan from an online company. “It was at 18 percent interest, and I had to pay it within three years, which was a risk I was willing to take because I had no other options,” she says.

Bank investment vs. community investment

Banks are restricted in whom they can choose for loans, says Carty Davis, an investment banker with C Squared Advisors.

“A bank can’t just say, ‘I really like this person. I’m going to take a flier on them because I know they’re going to be successful,’ ” he says. “They have a good business plan, but if they don’t have equity to put into the deal or cash to put into the deal, it’s going to be very difficult to get a loan approved.”

Davis says banks have certain criteria that must be met, such as a good credit history. He suggests that if potential borrowers don’t have that, they can go to the federal Small Business Administration.

But here’s the issue for lower-income communities: Those loans still require big cash down payments or home equity, which business owners may not have.

There are alternative ways of getting financing, such as from a company like Mission Driven Finance. In addition to investing in small community businesses, Mission Driven Finance also helps people looking for small-business loans better understand the technicalities of borrowing money to open or expand businesses.

The point, founder Lauren Grattan says, is to invest in neighborhoods that really need it. Because when businesses succeed, they hire locally and the entire community reaps the benefits.

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Boeing says it is reducing production of its 737 Max planes, and the temporary slowdown will begin in mid-April.

CEO Dennis Muilenburg says the company will build 42 of the planes per month, down from the current 52, while keeping the same number of workers. Boeing still has an enormous backlog of orders — about 4,600 — for the Max planes. That will take years to fill.

Muilenburg says he now knows that two deadly crashes within five months of each other, involving Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, had a common link of a malfunctioning flight-control software called MCAS.

He says he has asked Boeing’s board of directors to create a committee to review company policies for airplane development and recommend improvements.

Ethiopian Airlines released a preliminary report Thursday on the crash of its plane on March 10. Investigators say the pilots used procedures provided by Boeing but couldn’t stop the plane’s repeated nose dives. All 157 people on board died in the crash just after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

A Lion Air 737 Max jet crashed in a similar way on Oct. 9, with pilots frantically trying to stop the nose from dropping. The plane went down off the coast of Java, killing 189 people.

The 737 Max planes have been grounded worldwide for nearly a month as Boeing works on a software fix.

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President Trump said he wants to appoint former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain to the Federal Reserve Board.

“I find Herman to be an outstanding person,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office appearance with the vice premier of China on Thursday. “I would think he would do very well there.”

Cain, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, ran unsuccessfully for president during the 2012 election cycle. He achieved notoriety with his “9-9-9” tax plan, but dropped out of the race after allegations that he sexually harassed women and cheated on his wife — allegations Cain denied in 2011.

Trump suggested those old claims would not disqualify Cain from a Fed post.

“He’s doing some pre-checking now and I would imagine he’d be in great shape,” the president said.

Cain has criticized Federal Reserve policies in the past, suggesting in a 2012 Wall Street Journal column that the U.S. should return to the gold standard.

Trump has announced plans to fill a second vacancy on the Fed board with another critic, Stephen Moore, who has echoed the president’s own complaints that the Fed stifled economic growth by raising interest rates last year.

Moore, a conservative commentator at the Heritage Foundation, has drawn fire from those who say he’s overly partisan and lacks the economic credentials for a Fed post. The IRS is also seeking to collect more than $75,000 in back taxes from Moore, who insists he doesn’t owe the government any money.

Neither Moore nor Cain has officially been nominated for the Federal Reserve Board.

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Updated at 7:15 p.m. ET

Democrats have long called for President Trump to release his tax returns, and now a key congressman has put in a formal request with the IRS.

Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is requesting six years of Trump’s personal tax returns and the returns for some of his businesses for the years 2013-2018. Neal argues that Congress, and his committee in particular, need to conduct oversight of the IRS, including its policy of auditing the tax returns of sitting presidents.

“We have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude and I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal, and oversight rights,” he said in a statement about the request.

Neal said the action was about “policy, not politics.”

“My actions reflect an abiding reverence for our democracy and our institutions, and are in no way based on emotion of the moment or partisanship,” he said.

In his letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Neal asked for the information by April 10.

Trump has been unique compared with recent presidents in his refusal to release his personal tax returns. He said on Wednesday he was “not inclined” to adhere to the demand.

Taxpayer information is legally supposed to remain confidential, but a 1924 provision gives Congress some access. It has rarely been invoked, University of Virginia law professor George Yin told NPR in October 2018. That provision allows the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation to request the tax information.

Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee started pushing the idea of getting Trump’s tax returns after the president took office, but Republican majorities in Congress in 2017 and 2018 would not take action on the issue.

In February, with Democrats freshly in control of the House of Representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged patience in going after the tax returns.

“It’s not a question of just sending a letter,” Pelosi said. “You have to do it in a very careful way.”

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said on Wednesday that “the law is crystal clear” that the Treasury Department must adhere to Neal’s request.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Ways and Means Committee last month that if such a request were to be made, the administration “will follow the law and we will protect the president as we would protect any individual taxpayer under their rights.”

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A federal judge in San Francisco is barring utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric from reissuing dividends in favor of using the funds for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires in Northern and Central California.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, in a court hearing Tuesday, also said that he will closely monitor PG&E’s compliance with new wildfire prevention rules governing tree-trimming near power lines. Alsup is supervising the utility company’s felony probation stemming from its conviction in the case of a massive natural gas pipeline explosion in 2010.

“A lot of money went out in dividends that should have went into tree trimming,” Alsup said to PG&E acting chief executive John Simon as quoted by the Associated Press. “PG&E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budge whither. So a lot of trees should’ve been take down that were not.”

The judge’s order does not include the stringent condition requiring PG&E to inspect its entire power grid as he originally proposed.

Company spokesman James Noonan said in an email that “we share the court’s commitment to safety and understand that we must play a leading role in reducing the risk of wildfire throughout Northern and Central California.”

The court’s dividend plan was not a surprise. Last month in a court document, Alsup had signaled his intention to order the company not to issue dividends until it complied with “all applicable vegetation management requirements.”

PG&E initially had resisted the plan, arguing that it had already suspended dividends in 2017. The dividend payments may not resume without Alsup’s permission.

In February, PG&E said that it’s “probable” that it was responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire that killed at least 85 people and destroyed about 14,000 structures. The company, facing billions of dollars in possible liabilities filed for bankruptcy in January. Alsup is also presiding over that filing in separate proceedings.

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Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan will step down immediately, the company announced Thursday.

“It has become apparent to me that our ability to successfully move Wells Fargo forward from here will benefit from a new CEO and fresh perspectives,” Sloan said as part of the announcement.

He is the second Wells Fargo CEO to resign in about 2 1/2 half years, as the big bank has been buffeted by scandals. The most prominent involved bankers creating deposit and credit card accounts for millions of customers without their knowledge.

Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $185 million in penalties and fines in 2016 for creating unwanted accounts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Earlier this month, Sloan testified before Congress, assuring the House Financial Services Committee that “Wells Fargo is a better bank than it was three years ago, and we are working every day to become even better.”

But lawmakers from both political parties were skeptical.

And a few days later, the company revealed in a filing to a government regulator that Sloan would be getting a $2 million bonus for 2018.

That prompted California Democrat Maxine Waters, who runs the House Financial Services Committee, to call for him to be “shown the door.”

The troubles have been mounting for Wells Fargo over the years.

In an unrelated case, the consumer bureau also imposed a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo for overcharging customers for mortgages and auto loans. The fine was part of a larger settlement of charges the bank originated and sold mortgage loans that included false information in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

Sloan took over as CEO when John Stumpf stepped down in October 2016, in the wake of outrage over the accounts scandal.

Sloan said during the hearing that as many as 3.5 million unauthorized accounts had been opened, according to an audit.

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