by Jeff Sovern Javelin Strategy & Research has issued its annual report on identity fraud (a free version is available here). Javelin reports that 12.6 million Americans–or more than 5%–were victims of identity fraud in 2012, an increase of a million from 2011. It also states that nearly a quarter of consumers who received data breach […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Here's an excerpt from the announcement: Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it is gathering information to develop options for policymakers to make repayment of private student loans more manageable for struggling borrowers. The CFPB has found that private student loan borrowers who wish to pay their loans, but face high payments, […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. The first two sentences say: The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told at least four banks that it may sue them over vehicle loans and interest-rate markups by auto dealers that appear discriminatory, according to three people briefed on the matter. The banks received letters from the CFPB last week […]
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 […]
More here. His work informed my writing and the work of countless others, and as it happens, as an undergraduate, I was fortunate enough to take a class with him .
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 […]
You can sign the petition here. GoLocalWorcester.com has more here.
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 […]
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 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 […]