Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Colin Marks Study of the Prevalence of Disclaimers in Online Sales

Colin P. Marks of St. Mary's has written Online and As Is.  Here is the abstract: Online retail is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. Consumers enjoy the ease with which they can browse, click, and order goods from the comfort of their own homes. Though it may come as no surprise to most […]

Bloomberg: Dismantling Dodd-Frank May Have to Wait

Here.  Excerpt: Hensarling does already have a bill in the House, the Financial Choice Act, that’s being given long odds. “We think the chances that the bill becomes law are less than 20 percent—maybe as low as 10 percent,” Brian Gardner, Washington analyst at the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, wrote to clients on […]

CFPB Director Cordray’s CNBC Interview

Here.  Excerpt: [John] Harwood: The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial, said your agency is lawless. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who is an independent-minded senator, refers to you as King Richard. People say, "He's a dictator." What do you say? Cordray: First of all, I think it's completely ill-founded. There's never specifics in those kinds […]

WSJ: Key GOP Lawmaker: Commission Could Be Compromise in CFPB Overhaul

Remember how House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling said last month that he wanted to change the CFPB's structure to one headed by a single director reporting to the president?  Well, now the WSJ is reporting that Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri, chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer […]

Paul Bland in HuffPo: House GOP’s Bill to Eliminate Nearly All Class Actions Would Encourage More Ponzi Schemes & Other Corporate Cheating

Here.  Excerpt: [E]nter Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Corporate Lobbyist Heaven), with his ironically titled “Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act,” which passed through the House Judiciary Committee two weeks ago. Its passage was a remarkable feat of avoiding public notice or debate, with Goodlatte ramming through the legislation in the middle of the night, voting down […]

What Vast Experience? Heritage Foundation Report: FTC Should Absorb CFPB Powers, Citing FTC’s Supposed “vast regulatory experience in . . . consumer financial markets”

by Jeff Sovern Here.  Here's something they say about transferring the Bureau's authority to the FTC:  Transferring all federal consumer protection authority to the Federal Trade Commission, the agency with vast regulatory experience in assessing practices affecting consumer financial services markets, would dramatically improve the federal regulatory framework for consumer financial protection. Maybe Heritage should have paid […]

Texas’s Angie Littwin Provides an Example of an Op-ed that Can be Written for Any State to Show How the CFPB Benefits Consumers in That State

In the Dallas Morning News.  The headline is Texans need to tell Ted Cruz and Jeb Hensarling to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is an excellent op-ed and could serve as a template for use in drafting op-eds for other states.  Excerpt: Thanks to the bureau, Texas-based EZCORP had to stop illegally collecting debts […]