Here is a sampling of reaction to the proposed rule on payday pending issued yesterday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. EDITORIAL: A Lame Response to Predatory Loans (The New York Times) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been promising for more than a year to rein in the payday lending industry, whose business model […]
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
The Hill reports today: Students who start at four-year, nonprofit colleges only have about a 50-50 chance of graduating, according to a new report released Wednesday. Third Way, a centrist think tank in Washington, studied students with loans at the colleges and found what it called “stunning levels of institutional failure.” The report said private […]
Separate from its new proposed rule on payday lending, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued a "request for information" concerning potentially high-risk loan products and practices that are not specifically covered by the proposed rule. The request for information is focused on: Concerns about risky products not covered: The Bureau is seeking information about […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today proposed a rule aimed at ending payday debt traps by requiring lenders to take steps to make sure consumers have the ability to repay their loans. The proposed rule would also cut off repeated debit attempts that rack up fees. The proposed rule would cover payday loans, auto title loans, […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has taken action against a former Wells Fargo employee for an illegal mortgage fee-shifting scheme. The CFPB found that David Eghbali referred a substantial number of loan closings to a single escrow company, which shifted its fees from some customers to others at Eghbali’s request. Eghbali could then manipulate loan […]
This week, the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Florida fled cases against two operations charged with running phony student loan debt relief schemes, and the FTC settled a case brought earlier this year against a operators of a debt-relief scheme. In the first case, the FTC and the State of Florida allege in […]
The Food and Drug Administration today finalized a new food safety rule under the landmark, bipartisan FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. The rule requires companies in the United States and abroad to take steps to prevent intentional adulteration of the food supply. Although the FDA says that intentional adulteration is unlikely, the new rule advances […]
ThinkProgress reports: Bank of America does not have to pay a $1.3 billion penalty assessed years ago, an appeals court ruled Monday. A jury found the megabank guilty of fraud in 2013, after Department of Justice (DOJ) officials decided not to settle a case involving a program run by its subsidiary Countrywide. Countrywide employees created […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit yesterday affirmed its 2014 holding that a debt collector violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when it files a proof of claim in a bankruptcy case on a debt that it knows to be time-barred. In this case, the debt collector argued that the earlier […]
The Washington Post reports today that DeVry University and the University of Phoenix will stop using pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clauses that bar students from filing class-action lawsuits or otherwise taking their grievances to the courts. The story is here. In a related story, the Post recently explained that "It's almost impossible for students to sue […]