Senator Elizabeth Warren answers policy questions about the economy, free markets, and regulation for the Washington Post, here.
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
The Department of Education today proposed a new Borrower Defense Rule that would abandon important protections designed to stop for-profit colleges from forcing students to give up their right to take schools to court for wrongdoing by forcing them to arbitrate any claims. Forced arbitration provisions, together with bans on the right of students to […]
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell ponders the Trump Administration's choice of someone with "zero experience in the complicated world of financial regulation or consumer protection" to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Considering consumer protection more broadly, she writes: It’s bizarre. Whenever they get the chance, Republican officials seem intent on bleeding consumers dry. Or […]
The Hill reports that the Mick Mulvaney has chosen Brian Johnson to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's acting deputy director. Johnson had previously served as the CFPB’s principal policy director. He had been hired by Mulvaney last year to rein in and rebrand the controversial regulator. The full article is here.
The Washington Post recently reported on a phenomenon I had not previously been aware of: mass-mailing checks to strangers, that when cashed become high-interest loans. As a trainee at one firm described it, "basically a way of monetizing poor people." The article is here.
The Regulatory Review has this article.
Mick Mulvaney, at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cut in half a fine that his Obama-era predecessor sought against a payday lender and dropped some of the agency’s earlier claims in the case, three people familiar the matter told Reuters. Reuter's article is here.
The New York Times reports that Equifax has agreed to a consent order with eight state financial regulators in response to the breach that allowed hackers to steal sensitive personal information on more than 147 million people last year. The order describes specific steps that Equifax must take, including conducting security audits at least once […]
A new report from the think tank New America finds that basic banking services such as opening and maintaining a checking account can cost substantially more if you are black or Latino. For instance, community banks in predominantly black neighborhoods require an average minimum opening deposit of about $80, compared with about $68 in white […]
The Hill reports that a judge has ordered the Department of Education to stop collecting debts from all students defrauded by the for-profit Corinthian College, which shut down in 2015. "The court ruled in May that the Department of Education had violated privacy laws by using Social Security Administration information to help it determine how […]

