Buy Now, Pay Later transactions (BNPL) are increasing dramatically. And for some folks, they are probably positive. But for others, BNPL can create significant problems. In case you don’t already know, the typical BNPL transaction enables consumers to purchase something by making four equal payments, one on the date of the purchase and the other […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
At Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast. They broke the interview into two segments, with the second to drop next week; I am disappointed at having to wait until next week to hear the second half.
So reports Kate Berry in an American Banker article, CFPB’s top enforcement official, Cara Petersen, resigns. Berry writes: “It has been devastating to see the Bureau’s enforcement function being dismantled through thoughtless reductions in staff, inexplicable dismissals of cases, and terminations of negotiated settlements that let wrongdoers off the hook,” Petersen wrote in an email, […]
We received the following call for papers and speakers: The Loyola Consumer Law Review is currently seeking authors and speakers for its upcoming March 2026 symposium, on the state of consumer protection in the United States during the second Trump administration. Scholars could explore how consumers have and will continue to be impacted by the […]
I hope some reporter will ask that question of someone in the Trump administration but I’m not sure who the person to ask would be. OMB Director and CFPB Interim Director Russell Vought? We have written at length about the administration’s attempts to shutter and shatter the CFPB. The FTC has certainly taken some hits, […]
So Jasper Goodman reports. The bill would leave open the possibility of the Bureau receiving funds through the normal appropriations process, or in the words of one of my kids, “yeah, right.”
At Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Finance Monitor podcast.
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill caps an individual’s aggregate government student loans for professional school education at $150,000. For many people, that wouldn’t be enough to cover the cost of attending, for example, a law or medical school. A 2021 ABA study that surveyed more than 1300 lawyers who had graduated or been licensed in the […]
Jonathan S. Gould of Berkeley & Rory Van Loo of BU have written Legislating for the Future, 92 U. Chi. L. Rev. 375 (2025). The article is about legislation to prevent financial crises but much of it applies to consumer protection statutes in general. They say, for example: Members of Congress focus on their immediate […]
Here, in Bloomberg Law. Weinberger writes: That Vought is telling CFPB employees to come collect their personal belongings is a sign that he’s confident the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will overturn a lower court ruling that blocked an attempt to fire nearly 1,500 members of the approximately 1,700 people who worked […]