by Jeff Sovern As has been widely reported, last week the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million for setting up phony accounts in consumers' names. But that didn't stop the House Financial Services Committee from voting yesterday on a largely party-line vote to adopt the Financial Choice Act, which would gut the Bureau. According to Law360, the […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
From Morning Consult's How Would Democrats Run the Senate Banking Committee?: Remarks over the last year from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the committee’s top Democrat, make it clear that Democrats think they stand a chance at facilitating bipartisan legislation in the financial sector if they take back the Senate for the 115th Congress. Brown, as […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to downplay the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show. The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and […]
Here. Excerpt: An analysis of more than 2,000 current card agreements shows they’re written, on average, at the 11th grade reading level – better than five years ago, but still too hard for at least half the population to readily understand. * * * When consumers come up against the dense legalese of card […]
David A. Hyman of Illinois, David J. Franklyn of San Francisco, Calla E. Yee, and Mohammad Hossein Rahmati of Sharif University of Technology have written Going Native: Can Consumers Recognize Native Advertising? Does it Matter? Here's the abstract: Native advertising, which matches the look and feel of unpaid news and editorials, has exploded online. The Federal […]
by Jeff Sovern So says a study from the Glassgow Centre for Population Health, Public Health Implications of Payday Lending. The study's "key messages:" • Payday lending is a contemporary public health concern: the vulnerability of the populations involved, the urgency, scale and growth of the issue coupled with the corrosive nature of personal debt and financial […]
Here. The staffer, Ronald L. Rubin, has also served as senior counsel to the House Financial Services Committee and as a partner at a big law firm. Excerpts: Nobody should be charged, harassed, or sued for a debt they've already paid or for someone else's debt. However, the CFPB's proposed solution is a hopelessly complex […]
John M. Newman of Memphis has written The Myth of Free. Here's the abstract: Myths matter. This Article is the first to squarely confront a powerful myth that pervades modern economic, technological, and legal discourse: the Myth of Free. The prevailing view is that consumers capture massive welfare surplus from an ever-rising flood of innovative […]
Irvine lawyer Greg Labate is quoted in the Orange County Register: Labate advises clients to get their employees to sign arbitration agreements, waiving their right to sue in court, and sending disputes to privately hired arbitrators. * * * “People question whether arbitration tends to favor employers,” Labate told a [Professionals in Human Resources Association] […]
Adam J. Levitin of Georgetown has written Pandora's Digital Box: Digital Wallets and the Honor All Wallets Rules. Here's the abstract: Digital wallets are poised to transform the world of retailing. These digital wallets, such as ApplePay and Android Pay, are “smart” payment devices that can integrate payments with two-way, real-time communications of any type […]