by Jeff Sovern H.R. 5802 passed the House Financial Services Committee today, on a 35-25 vote. The bill would exempt from the FDCPA any lawyer to the extent that the lawyer "is engaged in litigation activities in connection with a legal action in a court of law to collect a debt . . ." If […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern Kate Berry has a report at the American Banker, A CFPB commission will never fly, chock full of interesting quotes. The gist of it is that the Senate Democrats who voted for the bank bill oppose changes in the CFPB and so say they will not support a revised bill if the House […]
Colin P. Marks of St. Mary's has written Online Terms as In Terrorem Devices. Here's the abstract: Online shopping has quickly replaced the brick-and-mortar experience for a large portion of the consuming public. The online transaction itself is rote: browse items, add them to your cart, and checkout. Somewhere along the way, the consumer is likely […]
by Jeff Sovern CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney famously said that the Bureau should not push the envelope. He also said at the same time: There will absolutely be times when circumstances require us to take dramatic action to protect consumers. At those times, I expect us to be vigorous in our enforcement of the […]
by Jeff Sovern Here in the LA Times. Excerpt: [T]he current occupant of the Oval Office, President Trump, a wealthy businessman, is aggressively pursuing policies that undermine each of Kennedy's declared rights. * * * Kennedy proposed four basic consumer rights: The right to safety: "To be protected against the marketing of goods which are hazardous […]
Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard has written The Promise and Perils of Algorithmic Lenders' Use of Big Data, 93 Chicago-Kent Law Review (2018). Here's the abstract: Like many new technologies, algorithmic lenders’ use of Big Data holds great promise but may also be perilous. At the most basic level, Big Data is simply a toolkit for “creating, […]
Ronen Avraham of Tel Aviv University – Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law and Texas and Anthony J. Sebok of Cardozo have written An Empirical Investigation of Third Party Consumer Litigation Funding, 104 Cornell Law Review __ (2018). Here is the abstract: This is the first large-scale empirical study of consumer third-party litigation funding in the […]
by Jeff Sovern So Banking Exchange reports. Excerpt: Otting believes a flaw of how CRA has evolved is its strong emphasis on low-to-moderate income mortgage lending and lending for low-to-moderate income multifamily housing. He thinks more types of activities should count toward meeting CRA’s intention. For example, he says, small business lending in low-to-moderate income […]
The HIll is reporting that the House insists on going to conference to resolve differences between the House-passed Financial Choice Act and the Senate bill, while the Senate Democrats who supported the bill say they would oppose major changes in it. The House bill makes major changes in the CFPB.
Here. Excerpt: President Donald Trump and other supporters of the major banking bill that cleared the Senate on Wednesday say they want to rescue the nation’s lenders from a crush of regulations. But far from being crushed, the industry looks more like it's booming. Banks have hauled in record profits for the last three years […]