Forbes has an account here. Forbes has a paywall but if you haven't read any Forbes articles this month, you should be able to read the article. There's a lot in the article worth reading, but here's a short excerpt: Senator Warren opened the hearing by highlighting how student loan debt exacerbates the racial wealth […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
Howell E. Jackson and Colin Mark, both of Harvard, have written May the Executive Branch Forgive Student Loan Debt Without Further Congressional Action? Here's the abstract: On April 1, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that Secretary of Education Michael Cardona will consider whether the President has legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 per debtor in […]
Eric Goldman of Santa Clara has written (illustrated?) The Crisis of Online Contracts (as Told in 10 Memes). Here is the disappointingly memeless abstract: This essay explains the “crisis” of online contracts, the legal fiction that consumers have assented to online contract terms when we have ample empirical evidence that they didn’t really mean to […]
by Jeff Sovern So says an indentified financial services lobbyist, quoted in Neil Haggerty's article in The American Banker, Will Senate vote on CFPB chief come down to tiebreaker? (behind paywall but available on Lexis). Here's the relevant excerpt: A financial services lobbyist added that most Republicans likely won't vote to confirm any person nominated by […]
Here, in Facebook v. Duguid. In other words, if all the device does is call numbers that you specificaly tell it to call, it's not an ATDS within the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday, Acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio posted an item to the CFPPB Blog that suggests that the Bureau may rekindle its former payday lending rule in some form. Here's the post in full: The CFPB is acutely aware of consumer harms in the small dollar lending market, and is particularly concerned with […]
by Jeff Sovern Consumer law is filled with illusory consumer protections, and one form they take is the supposed obligation to give serious consideration to the possiblity that the provider is wrong in its claims. Examples include credit bureaus' obligations to conduct a reasonable investigation of consumer disputes–an obligation which has historically been discharged in […]
Here. It might be behind a paywall, but you can find it on Lexis. I enjoyed and recommend the whole column, but here's an excerpt: Jim Kimberly, an AT&T spokesman, told me that "arbitration is a faster, less expensive, easier means of resolving disputes." * * * For businesses, arbitration is indeed faster, cheaper and […]
by Jeff Sovern The recording is here. More information here. I have started listening to the recording and am finding it excellent so far. Very instructive.
by Jeff Sovern Last year we blogged about the CFPB's disappointing abusiveness policy statement. But things are different this year and the Bureau has wisely rescinded the Policy Statement, saying that it "was inconsistent with the Bureau’s duty to enforce Congress’s standard and rescinding it will better serve the CFPB’s objective to protect consumers from […]