by Jeff Sovern Rohit Chopra, of the Consumer Federation of America, recently served at the CFPB and obviously has experience with consumer protection issues. Simons, who formerly served as director of the FTC's competition bureau, is currently at Paul Weiss. I don't know what experience, if any, he has on the types of consumer protection […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on consumer data security. The Hill covered it, in a report headlined Senators bear down on credit reporting industry over data security. Here is an excerpt: “If they lose my data as Equifax did, or if someone submits to them data that is an error […]
We received the following announcement: ABA Section of Antitrust Law Consumer Protection Committee Volunteer Opportunities for Law Students The Consumer Protection Committee is the ABA’s premier group for developments in the law of privacyand data security, false advertising, deceptive marketing, and unfair trade practices, providing timelyupdates on law enforcement, rulemakings, and business guidance from the FTC, […]
Petra Persson of Stanford University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics has written Attention Manipulation and Information Overload. Here is the abstract: Limits on consumer attention give firms incentives to manipulate prospective buyers' allocation of attention. This paper models such attention manipulation and shows that it limits the ability of disclosure regulation to improve consumer welfare. Competitive […]
by Jeff Sovern The WSJ article is here. Excerpt: Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina introduced a bill to require the three major credit firms—Equifax, Experian PLC and TransUnion—to submit to regular federal cybersecurity reviews for the first time. All three companies also would have to phase out their use of Social Security numbers to verify consumers’ […]
by Jeff Sovern The Wall Street Journal, in a story headlined Regulator Fight Flares Anew Over Arbitration Rule As GOP Gears Up To Vote, reports on the CFPB response to the Norieka op-ed I wrote about earlier: The CFPB countered Mr. Noreika’s attack by publishing a new report on the rule’s effect on consumers, arguing there […]
by Jeff Sovern Acting Comptroller of the Currency and former bank lawyer Keith Norieka has an op-ed in The Hill, Senate should vacate the harmful consumer banking arbitration rule, that is seriously flawed. I'm going to write about two of those flaws here. First, Norieka concludes by writing: Instead of mandating only one way to resolve […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Lots of irony in this one, as you can tell from the headline. A sample: Eighteen groups representing thousands of corporations and banks filed the lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last Friday in federal court in Dallas. Oddly, they did not attempt to individually resolve the dispute through an arbitration process, […]
by Jeff Sovern I've been listening to the several hearings in Washington this week at which former Equifax CEO Richard Smith testified. I haven't finished yet, and may have more to say, but here's a quick observation. Mr. Smith testified at various points that Equifax planned to make things right for consumers. For example, here […]
by Jeff Sovern There's been a steady drumbeat of criticism for the CFPB from certain members of Congress for not moving sooner on the Wells Fargo unauthorized account scandal. These critics also tend to support legislation, like the Financial Choice Act, which would take away the power the CFPB used to fine Wells Fargo for […]