Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Elon Musk is wrong to call the CFPB a “duplicative regulatory agency” and for it to be “deleted”

Earlier today, Elon Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the CFPB should be deleted as a duplicative regulatory agency. I’m not sure why Musk considers the CFPB duplicative or what he thinks it is duplicative of (or if he himself knows), but it is simply wrong to call the CPB duplicative. Some […]

Steiger Fellowship provides paid consumer law summer internships for law students, including 1Ls

Here’s the announcement: The Janet D. Steiger Fellowship Project provides law students with the extraordinary opportunity to work in the consumer protection departments of state and territorial Offices of Attorneys General and other consumer protection agencies, as well as the National Association of Attorneys General and the Attorney General’s Office of the District of Columbia. […]

Andrea Boyack discusses her survey of abusive boilerplate terms on the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast

Here. From the description of the episode: Today, we are joined again by Professor Boyack who has written a follow-up article entitled: “Abuse of Contract: Boilerplate Erasure of Consumer Counterparty Rights,” University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2024-03, which is the subject of our new show. The abstract of her […]

Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice hiring policy director

We received the following announcement: We’re Hiring A Policy Director! At the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, we work to establish equity and fairness in the marketplace. We believe that building economic justice means developing and enforcing laws that fight fraud and deception, that protect low-income communities and communities of color, […]

Podcast: Should Congress Create a New Federal Charter for Non-Bank Payments Companies?

Here. The Consumer Finance Monitor podcast episode consists of an interview with Cornell’s Dan Awrey about his working paper “Money and Federalism,” “in which he advocates for the enactment of Federal legislation creating a federal charter for non-banks engaged in the payments business, like PayPal and Venmo.”

Lary Kirsch paper on State AGs and unfair mortgage lending

Larry Kirsch has written Power-Balancing: State Attorneys General and Unfair Mortgage Lending forthcoming in 9 International Review of Financial Consumers. Here’s the abstract: This paper is a case study in the enforcement of state unfair trade practice laws targeted at predatory mortgage lending and securitization abuses during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. It considers how […]

Loyola Consumer Law Review Call for Writers & Speakers at March Symposium on Big Tech and the Consumer

We received the following call for writers and speakers: The Loyola Consumer Law Review Seeking Writers, Speakers for its 2025 Symposium on “Big Tech” and the Consumer. The Loyola Consumer Law Review is hosting its annual symposium on March 21, 2025 at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law located in downtown Chicago. We are […]

Texas AG again rejects “earnings” argument about CFPB’s funding

As we previously reported, Texas’s conservative Attorney General takes the position that the CFPB is properly and currently funded. In a new filing captioned Plaintiff’s Response to Defendants’ Objections to Magistrate Judge’s Memorandum and Recommendation, Texas’s AG’s office states (footnotes and citation omitted): * * * Defendants attack the CFPB’s funding statute based on a flawed […]

Whither consumer protection in a second Trump administration?

The future, they say, is the hardest thing to predict. With that caveat, what can we expect from a second Trump administration for consumer prediction? Some quick thoughts: President-elect Trump will surely ask CFPB Director Rohit Chopra to resign so that he can replace Chopra with someone he prefers. Despite the fact that Vice President-elect […]