American Airlines is threatening to prohibit customers from making changes to nonrefundable tickets if Congress makes good on a proposal to crack down on what critics call unreasonable airline fees. The NYT article is here.
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
The New York Times reports: After the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, started scaling back consumer protections for student borrowers last year, six states and the District of Columbia sped up their own efforts to crack down on abusive lending practices by companies that administer federal loan programs. Now Ms. DeVos is trying to stop them. […]
The Hill reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on Congress to come up with a federal privacy standard in order to preempt states from passing their own laws governing data collection. The article is here.
The Washington Post, addressing the current work of the CFPB and the Department of Education, had editorials yesterday and today pertinent to student loans and higher education: Read "The Trump administration’s scandalous handling of student loans," here. Read "How Betsy DeVos could trigger another financial meltdown," here. The New York Times, addressing proposed changes by […]
Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group, said consumers cannot rely only on the organic seal from the USDA. The group says that the USDA is failing to protect ethical industry participants and consumers from fraud. Food Safety News has the story, here.
Pew Charitable Trusts reports that consumers are exposed to potentially harmful financial products from the nation’s fragmented regulatory system. "Innovation can spur growth and competition in financial markets and provide new and better options for customers. But without careful, balanced regulation, it can also present serious risks to consumers,” the report contends. The report also […]
The Los Angeles Sentinel reports on a new poll that finds consumers still support financial regulation and related enforcement. Moreover, consumer concern about payday and car-title lending has increased over the past year. Roughly three-fourths of likely 2018 voters support the existence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and more than half are concerned about Republican efforts […]
The bottom line: "Presidents deserve wide latitude in choosing agency heads to carry out their mission in line with the administration's priorities. And USA TODAY has a long history of supporting those choices even when we disagree with the views of particular nominees. But the public should be able to demand, at a minimum, that […]
Politico reports on continuing debate over rules to protect people from financial advisors' who put their own interests above those of the clients that they are advising. Older savers are often the targets of brokers’ self-enriching sales that saddle them with expensive products or investments they can’t easily exchange for cash, interviews with financial advisers […]
The Washington Post reports that "Facebook’s push to gain access to users' banking data and other sensitive financial information could help make online banking more efficient — or it could backfire among those skeptical that the world’s biggest social network can reliably safeguard personal data. The site has joined a growing race among big technology […]