Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its semi-annual update to the agency's rulemaking agenda. Go here for a nice explanation of the current agenda. Below is the actual agenda, as published on OMB's website, with clickable links to the regulatory materials themselves. CFPB Prerule Stage Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (Regulation C) 3170-AA10 CFPB […]
Author Archives: Brian Wolfman
Read this new report by the National Consumer Law Center, which maintains that incompetence and fraud in the tax preparation industry harms consumers. Here's how NCLC introduces its report: Each year, tens of millions of consumers rely upon paid tax preparers to help them file accurate and compliant tax returns, yet the majority of these […]
That is the headline for one of today's lead stories in the satirical journal The Daily Currant. The story is untrue, but sometimes satire drives home a point because what is satirical also seems plausible. After all, here, we know that Wal-Mart often doesn't pay enough for its employees to support themselves, let alone their […]
In a follow-up to its three-part series on the tax-lien/foreclosure machine in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post has just published this investigative report on Aeon Financial, a secretive organization that bought up tax liens in D.C. (and elsewhere) and is making millions off of fees and foreclosures. Here's an excerpt: The firm that threatened to […]
by Brian Wolfman As explained in this article by Christopher Jensen, Hyundai is trying to "help" its customers by forcing them to arbitrate disputes over warranty coverage. That's awfully nice of the company. Once a dispute occurs, customers might be terribly confused over whether they should arbitrate, engage in some other form of informal resolution, or […]
Last Tuesday, just in time for the Nation's gift-buying orgy (which now starts on Thanksgiving morning), U.S. PIRG issued its 28th annual Trouble in Toyland report, which surveys the dangers to kids posed by toys. The report covers toxins (such as lead, antimony, arsenic, and cadmium), choking hazards, excessively loud toys, laceration hazards, and strangulation risks. […]
The Project on Student Debt has issued Student Debt and the Class of 2012.That report found that Seven in 10 college seniors who graduated in 2012 had student loan debt, with an average of$29,400 for those with loans. The national share of seniors graduating with loans rose in recentyears, from 68 percent in 2008 to […]
Chris Morran explains in this article that the number of U.S. banks has hit its lowest point since the federal government began counting in 1934. The number has dropped precipitously since 1985 (going from about 18,000 to 6,800), which may mean fewer options for bank services and greater costs for consumers.
This article by Alan Feuer explains the difficulty of living on the minimum wage and follows a worker who must work two low-wage jobs to barely keep afloat. Here is an excerpt: On a recent Friday evening, Eduardo Shoy left work at 6 p.m. Mr. Shoy, a deliveryman for KFC and Pizza Hut, was coming […]
As we have previously noted (go here, for instance), dietary supplements are like drugs–that is, they are claimed to treat or prevent disease and have a physiological effect on the human body. And they are marketed like drugs–that is, they are marketed for their claimed beneficial physiological effects on the human body. But because they […]