by Jeff Sovern The drip of bad news for consumer protection continues. Yesterday, the CFPB announced a "Call for Evidence Regarding Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Functions;" Evan Weinberger has more at Law360. Today we learned, as Allison posted, that the Bureau's budgetary request for this quarter is nothing–it will spend down its reserves instead. Allison […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern Last week, the House Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a hearing titled Legislative Proposals for a More Efficient Federal Financial Regulatory Regime: Part III on a variety of bills. One of the bills, H.R. 1264, provides that "Community financial institutions shall be exempt from all rules and regulations issued by the Bureau." […]
Writing in the Brownsville Herald, consumer law professors Mary Spector (SMU), Genevieve Hebert Fajardo (St. Mary’s) and Neil L. Sobol (Texas A& M) critique the debt collection bill pending in the House, HR 4550, which would exclude from the FDCPA's coverage attorneys to the extent they are engaging in litigation. Excerpt: House Resolution 4550, would […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. It seems unlikely that the Bureau would go to the trouble of a rulemaking only to ratify the rule. The Bureau had previously stated that it intended to amend the prepay card rule.
WaPo has a report, headlined How robo-callers outwitted the government and completely wrecked the Do Not Call list, reporting that the FTC receives 19,000 complaints per day from people on the Do-Not-Call list about robocallers. The FTC not only does not have the resources to do much about it, but when it tries, its efforts are […]
by Jeff Sovern A friend forwarded me the two images below. My friend, a prior H&R Block customer, received the 2017 software update for $24.95 while his son, who has not used the software in the past, was offered the identical software for $9.95. This type of price discrimination always makes me wonder about whether […]
by Jeff Sovern The WSJ has an interesting story out, Trump Administration Seeks to Change Rules on Bank Lending to the Poor, that reports: Community groups say the law should be expanded in order to bring opportunity to more low-income areas, while banks say they would do a better job of helping these people if the […]
by jeff Sovern The American Banker has the story, in a report headlined Is CFPB’s data freeze about security or a political ploy? The article quotes Minnesota's Prentiss Cox, as saying "This is a very thinly veiled attempt to shut down fraud enforcement, which is consistent with the not-even-veiled priority agenda item of the congressional Republicans to eviscerate […]
by Jeff Sovern Last May, President Trump appointed bank lawyer Keith Norieka as interim head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Now that the full-time Comptroller has taken office, Norieka is returning to his firm "where he’ll consult large domestic and international banks on precisely the issues handled by the agency he […]