ineligible for credit, appears to have originated in 1935, when the federal home loan bank board asked the home owners'loan corporation to create " residential security maps " for 239 cities that would indicate the level of security for real estate investments in each surveyed city. 1 the resulting maps designated four categories of lending and investment risk, each with a letter and color designation. type " d " areas, those considered to be the riskiest for lending and which included many neighborhoods with predominantly african - american populations, were color - coded red on the maps - - hence the term " redlining " ( federal home loan bank board, 1937 ). private lenders reportedly constructed similar maps that were used to determine credit availability and terms. the 1961 report on housing by the u. s. commission on civil rights reported practices that included requiring high down payments and rapid amortization schedules for african - american borrowers as well as blanket refusals to lend in particular areas. the home owners'loan corporation ( holc ) was a new deal agency established in 1933 to help stabilize real estate that had depreciated during the depression and to refinance mortgage debt of economically distressed homeowners. it granted fifteen - year mortgage loans at 5 percent interest to some 1 million homeowners between august 1933 and june 1936, the period it was authorized to originate new loans ( hiller, 2003 ). besides discrimination a variety of economic and institutional factors help to explain the relative unavailability of credit in lower - income neighborhoods. 2 thirty years ago, the secondary market for mortgages was rudimentary at best, which limited local loan originators'access to capital and reduced their ability to diversify credit risks geographically. 3 informational problems also inhibited lending in some urban areas. for example, relative to higher - income neighborhoods, lower - income areas tend to have fewer home sales and more - diverse housing structures, making accurate appraisal more difficult 4. similarly, credit evaluations tend to be more costly for lower - income borrowers, who are relatively more likely to have short or irregular credit histories. 5 informational barriers to lending were heightened by the absence of uniform national depositories of information on the credit experiences of consumers ; at the time, the credit - reporting system consisted of hundreds of local credit bureaus, each of which maintained limited information on local residents. 6 the high costs of gathering information, together with the difficulty of keeping information proprietary, may have created a " first - mover

november 12, 2020 bank of japan economic activity, prices, and monetary policy in japan speech at a meeting with local leaders in nagano ( via webcast ) adachi seiji member of the policy board ( english translation based on the japanese original ) i. impact of the novel coronavirus ( covid - 19 ) and economic developments at home and abroad a. developments regarding covid - 19 i would like to begin my speech by talking about developments regarding covid - 19. the outbreak of covid - 19 was first identified in china in january 2020, spreading to europe from late february. the number of confirmed cases in europe and the united states peaked out temporarily in around april, but thereafter the disease spread rapidly to emerging economies other than china. developments regarding covid - 19 continue to warrant attention as a resurgence in confirmed cases has been observed recently in the united states and europe ( chart 1 ). meanwhile, in japan, the number of confirmed cases surged from late march, and the government declared a state of emergency in april. although the state of emergency was lifted in may, the number of cases started to increase again from around july and then turned to a decline ; thereafter, the number has been fluctuating ( chart 1 ). however, the pace of increase in the number of cases in japan has been moderate compared with other major economies, with severe cases and confirmed deaths remaining contained. b. overseas economies with a view to suppressing the spread of covid - 19, many countries have implemented measures to constrain economic activity by imposing restrictions on going outside and on people's movement. it is worth remembering that it is as a result of these measures that the real gdp growth rate of these countries registered a substantial decline for the first two quarters of 2020, particularly the april - june quarter ( chart 2 ). however, as economic activity resumed gradually thereafter, led mainly by advanced economies, the global economy seems to have bottomed out and have started to pick up generally since around summer. according to data from the purchasing managers'index ( pmi ), which show business sentiment, the indices have been above 50 - - the borderline between improvement and deterioration in business conditions as perceived by firms ( chart 3 ). in addition, the world economic outlook released in october by the international monetary fund ( imf ) shows that growth projections for 2020 have been revised upward for many countries and regions ( chart 4 ). c. japan's economy turning to japan, the economy seems