Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

AP’s Ken Sweet: Employees at the nation’s consumer financial watchdog say it’s become toothless under Trump

Here. The article makes it look like the administration is dedicated to keeping federal employees from working. So much for the promise to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. Some excerpts: * * * Employees are reluctant even to talk to one another, out of fear that a conversation between two employees would be considered a […]

The American Prospect’s heartbreaking CFPB update: looks like a boom for scammers

By Maureen Tkacik and James Baratta, it’s captioned Hardly Workin’. It covers a lot of ground, but here’s one excerpt: In the meantime, formal entries into the CFPB’s consumer complaints database have soared, suggesting that the business of junk fees, predatory terms, and routine swindles is booming just as loudly as the Prospect has been predicting it would since […]

Call for Abstracts for the Berkeley Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference

We received the following call for abstracts (apologies for the formatting issues): We are pleased to announce the Eighth Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference will be held in Berkeley on Thursday and Friday, March 5-6, 2026! Please save the date!  The purpose of the CLSC is to support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer […]

Two recent essays attack the administration’s consumer protection moves

Seth Frotman & Tara Mikkilineni have written The Trump Administration Wants to Reboot Redlining at the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology’s Jolt Digest. Here’s an excerpt: [T] he Vought CFPB[] . . . . has quietly made a series of moves that would enable an unholy alliance of Big Tech and financial institutions to digitally […]

Will banks bring class actions?

That’s a possibility raised by Alan Kaplinsky in his analysis of the Supreme Court’s universal injunction case, Trump v. CASA, at Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor Blog. Because CASA will make it harder for consumer financial service companies to seek injunctions against CFPB regs, etc., Mr. Kaplinsky suggests they may resort to class actions, though […]

Hypocrisy alert: Critics of CFPB’s so-called lack of accountability prevent CFPB accountability

The Dodd-Frank Act provides that the CFPB “shall” issue a semiannual report on its activities and various other matters and that its director “shall appear before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the Senate and the Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives […]

Report finds administration’s consumer protection agenda has already cost Americans at least $18M

Here, from the Consumer Federation of America and Student Borrower Protection Center. The conclusion is based on elimination of fee limits, dropping of enforcement actions, and blocking payments to consumers, among other things.

Kathleen Engel: Here comes the latest race to the bottom in consumer finance

In the American Banker (behind paywall but available on Lexis). The essay is about how the CFPB is repeating the mistakes of the past. Excerpt: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is systematically removing guardrails designed to prevent abuses in the consumer finance market. With each retreat from its oversight obligations, the CFPB is expanding the opportunities for firms […]