Author Archives: Jeff Sovern

Senator Warren and the Confirmation of Richard Cordray to Head the CFPB

Politico puts out an often-interesting email newsletter, titled Morning Money, every weekday. This morning's edition quoted "a person close to" Senator Elizabeth Warren as saying the following: 'It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the large banks would have more ground to stand on with Elizabeth if they figured out a way to […]

A Journalist Writes About His Experiences as a Debt Collector

by Jeff Sovern Back in 2008, Fred Williams, a reporter for the Buffalo News who had written stories about debt collectors, worked as a debt collector for an upstate New York debt collection firm.  Williams was not exactly undercover–he disclosed that he had written the stories–but it sounds as if he was treated as any […]

Now that the OCC Head is Not a Bank Lobbyist, Republicans Want a Commission There Too

by Jeff Sovern The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is a bank regulator that, like the CFPB, has a single head rather than a commission structure and gets its funding outside the appropriations process.  I have pointed out before two things about this: first, that unlike with the CFPB, Republicans have been happy […]

CFPB Wants to Hear From Students

Here's the email they sent out:   Good afternoon,   We need your help to figure out what’s the deal with financial products marketed to students, like debit cards and checking accounts.   Email us at CFPB_StudentsFedReg@cfpb.gov by March 18 to tell us about any aspect of your experience.   That may include: Signing up for the card or account […]

Carolyn Dessin Paper: Arbitrability and Vulnerability

Carolyn Dessin of Akron has written Arbitrability and Vulnerability, 21 Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 349 (2012).  Here's the abstract: Arbitration is cool. Everybody's doing it. In the eighty-five years since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Recent decades have seen the meteoric rise of […]

Republican Response to State of the Union Blames Fiscal Crisis on “Reckless Government Policies”

by Jeff Sovern You can read Senator Rubio's speech here.  Here's the key language: "a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies."  He doesn't specify the policies, but he's probably referring to the old, thoroughly debunked, claim that the CRA caused the subprime crisis, something the Republican presidential […]