Brian posted yesterday about the House hearing. For those who don't want to listen to the recording, you can find reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Rep. Ann Wagner takes aim at consumer protection chief), Housing Wire (Tensions escalate at House hearing on constitutionality of the CFPB), Money (This Lawmaker Just Gave the Perfect Defense […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
The book is Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward (Praeger 2017), by research economist Larry Kirsch and sociologist Greg Squires (George Washington University Sociology Department). Here's an abstract: Meltdown is the first book length account of the CFPB from its inception through 2015. With a foreword based on an interview with […]
by Jeff Sovern I originally had a different title for this post in mind, but I didn't have the discipline to resist the one above. Not that anyone should have any doubts, but the CFPB director is not the executive the article refers to. Anyway, the House Financial Services Committee is having a hearing titled […]
by Jeff Sovern The Department of Justice has now filed its brief in PHH, arguing that the CFPB as created by the Dodd-Frank Act was unconstitutional because the statute did not give the president the power to fire the Bureau's director without cause, and that the appropriate remedy is the one selected by the original […]
Here. Excerpt: The American Bar Association is “outraged” that the Trump administration is calling to eliminate funding for the LSC and is calling upon members of Congress to restore it, ABA President Linda Klein said in a statement Thursday. Klein noted that LSC offices are in every congressional district and help 1.9 million people […]
Here. The essay reviews Judge Gorsuch's arbitration decisions. Here's an excerpt: Senators must press Judge Gorsuch on arbitration during his hearing next week. If he does believe that limits on the FAA’s “heavy hand” exist [as Judge Gorsuch indicated in an opinion], he should be willing to define and describe them. Otherwise, more and more […]
Here. Excerpt: A government brief in opposition to the CFPB [in the PHH case] likely would have significant weight at the D.C. Circuit, and would boost the odds that the Justice Department might block CFPB efforts to push the case to the U.S. Supreme Court later on. * * * “In the longer term, an […]
So says Lisa Servon in her op-ed, Save the federal consumer watchdog: The CFPB protects us all.
Brad Wolverton's article, Your Wallet Will Suffer If This Agency Is Gutted, is an excellent roundup of the Bureau's accomplishments that cuts across a variety of areas, including student loans, credit cards, debt collection, mortgages, payday loans, credit reporting agencies, auto lending, consumer complaints, military protections, and arbitration. Excerpt: Collectively, for every $1 in federal spending on […]