by Jeff Sovern The CFPB protects consumers in a number of ways. Perhaps the three most important things it does are enforce the law, supervise some financial institutions, and create rules. A less important mechanism, but still important, is maintaining its complaint database. All of these seem to be coming under attack under Interim director […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
David A. Hyman of Georgetown and William E. Kovacic of GW and , King's College London – The Dickson Poon School of Law have written Implementing Privacy Policy: Who Should Do What?. Here's the abstract: Academic scholarship on privacy has focused on the substantive rules and policies governing the protection of personal data. An extensive literature […]
Belinda Reeveand Roger Magnusson, both of The University of Sydney Law School have written Regulation of Food Advertising to Children in Six Jurisdictions: A Framework for Analyzing and Improving the Performance of Regulatory Instruments, 35 Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (2018). Here is the abstract: Childhood obesity is a public health crisis, and globally, […]
by Jeff Sovern Many localities require restaurants to post their health department grades at their entrance so diners can decide whether the restaurant is safe to patronize. One of my students, Vasilios D. Lolis, saw the picture below on Instagram. Can you spot the grade? (I lack the technical know-how to eliminate the caption) This points […]
by Jeff Sovern Mr. Mulvaney has served as interim CFPB director since November 25, or three months and two days. The CFPB has yet to announce commencement of an enforcement action during that period, though it has dismissed an enforcement action. For comparison, during 2016, the Bureau brought 42 enforcement actions, meaning that if it […]
by Jeff Sovern The White House issued its 2017 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and AgencyCompliance with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act today. According to Table 1-3 in the report, at page 19, the benefits of three consumer protection rules the administration looked at were estimated at $1.9 to […]
SCOTUS blog has information here. The case name is New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira and here is the description of the issues: Whether a dispute over applicability of the Federal Arbitration Act's Section 1 exemption is an arbitrability issue that must be resolved in arbitration pursuant to a valid delegation clause; and (2) whether the FAA's […]
by Jeff Sovern During a recent hearing by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Information Privacy Center and an adjunct at Georgetown, pointed out that we still didn't know who was behind the Equifax breach. He noted that people would have been deeply upset […]
Ryan Sandler and Charles J. Romeo, both of the CFPB have written The Effect of Debt Collection Laws on Access to Credit. Here's the abstract: Debt collection by third party collection agencies is an important part of the market for consumer credit, but has been little studied in the economics literature. Regulations on debt collection practices […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB has posted online Interim Director Mulvaney's calendar for December and January. I can't tell how complete it is, but it has only a fraction of the number of items that former Director Cordray's calendar (also online at the same site) had for the months I randomly selected. Either Mulvaney is […]