Here in a Maryland Daily Record editorial (behind a paywall but available on Lexis). Here’s an excerpt (disclosure: I am on the editorial board): Some consumers, enticed by BNPL, become overcommitted and can’t meet their financial obligations. You might think BNPL providers would suffer when consumers are in that situation, but the BNPL companies have […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Mark Elliott Budnitz of Georgia State has written Big Tech and Consumer Payments: The Good, the Bad, and the Unintended Consequences, 37 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 116 (2025). Here’s the abstract: “Each stage of the American banking industry history demonstrates the interlinkage of finance and technology…” Our era is no exception. The financial services industry […]
Daniel J. Solove of George Washington has written Enforcing Privacy Law: Why Private Litigation Is Essential. Here’s the abstract: Enforcement is an essential dimension for effective privacy and data protection laws—and it is probably the most important one. No matter how many privacy laws are enacted and how strong the laws are, if enforcement falls short, […]
Here. Here’s an excerpt from the story (not the report itself) about an omitted section: The college pricing section focuses on the role universities themselves play in the student loan crisis. The sticker price for college tuition has risen at more than double the rate of inflation since the year 2000. Most students don’t pay […]
Here. Excerpt: The level of changes to this year’s report seem to go far beyond the agency’s standard editing process, said Mike Pierce, who served as the senior adviser to the student loan ombudsman at CFPB from 2011-2018. “I can’t ever think of a set of circumstances or something quite like this [that] happened in […]
Here. Meanwhile, WaPo’s Michelle Singletary calls Trump’s proposal ridiculous and says it’s dead on arrival, saying “If the administration were truly interested in affordability, it would have strengthened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rather than kneecapping it.” Not surprisingly, the bank trade organizations say the 10% cap would “reduce credit availability and be devastating for millions of […]
KEN SWEET and SEUNG MIN KIM have the story for the Associated Press here. The industry argument is that issuers would lose money on higher-risk borrowers at that rate and so would be unwilling to provide credit cards to them. Here’s an excerpt from the article: “A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion […]
Here, by Kate Berry (behind paywall but available on Lexis). Excerpt: Last month, District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Vought‘s refusal to request funding for the CFPB violates an existing injunction. She found that the combined earnings of the Fed means “everything the Federal Reserve earns.” Her order made it clear that a failure to seek […]
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act bars discrimination in consumer lending on the basis of sex but does not explicitly apply to sexual orientation or gender identity, as some state laws do. Back in 2021, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County interpreting Title VII, the employment discrimination statute, to forbid such discrimination, […]

