That's one of the conclusions reached by Adam Levitin in his new essay The Politics of Financial Regulation and the Regulation of Financial Politics. Here is the abstract: This review essay considers six recent books on the financial crisis (Bernanke, Blinder, Bair, Barofsky, Connaughton, and Admati & Hellwig). The essay discerns two basic narratives of […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Guest post by Mark Totten, Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law Last week Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against a short-term lender for abusive practices, likely making Illinois the first state to exercise its new powers under the Dodd-Frank Act to enforce the law’s ban on “unfair, deceptive, […]
That's the theme of this article by Michael Hiltzik. Here's an excerpt: [I]f you really want to destroy a business, just hack away at its customer service. … The principle also holds true for government programs, which is why you should be very suspicious about the relentless budget-cutting at the Social Security Administration. Mark Miller […]
by John Cook at Gawker
The D.C. Circuit has upheld the Federal Reserve's debit-card transaction fee regulations, as explained in this article by Zoe Tillman. The circuit court's ruling reverses a decision of Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Circuit Judge David Tatel explains the parameters of the ruling right up front: Combining […]
by Brian Wolfman Federal agencies issue annual reports on their implementation of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552.The reports say how many requests for information the agency gets, the bases for withholding information when information is withheld, the speed with which requests are fulfilled (or rejected), etc. One serious FOIA problem […]
The Supreme Court sometimes affects consumer law and policy, so our readers may be interested in this piece by law professor Erwin Chemerinsky (pictured to the right). Chemerinsky urges Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to quit the Supreme Court after it has finished its work early this summer. Quitting then, Chemerinsky says, would allow the President […]
The Consumer Finanical Protection Bureau today issued its third annual report on oversight of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Among other things, the report provides an overview of debt-collection complaints the agency has received from consumers. The report: (1) provides background on the debt collection market; (2) summarizes the Bureau’sconsumer response function and the […]
This article by Andrew Sprung makes the case that the market for private health insurance generally has improved — in some cases, dramatically — for consumers after passage of the Affordable Care Act. And, as the article explains, under the ACA that market now must cover people with pre-existing conditions, which may be as many […]
Remember the $25 billion settlement with Bank of America, Citibank, and other major mortgage servicers over fraud and other shoddy mortgage lending practices associated with the financial meltdown of 2008 and 2009? (Read about the settlement here and here.) The court-appointed monitor, Joseph A. Smith, Jr., has issued a final report and a slew of associated data […]