by Jeff Sovern Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee split, 12-12 on the vote to confirm FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra to be the next CFPB director. According to Neil Haggerty's report in the American Banker (behind a paywall but available on Lexis), the Senate can still confirm Chopra but it will first require a motion to […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern Barney Frank is speaking today at the Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference. Here's something I posted in 2015 on his autobiography: I just finished listening to the audio version of Barney Frank's autobiography, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, which Frank reads himself. I listened to it […]
by Jeff Sovern You should be able to listen here. The American Banker's Kate Berry has a story here, behind a paywall, unfortunately, but if you have Lexis, you can read it there. Excerpt: [Chopra's] aggressive past statements coupled with the power and high profile that comes with the CFPB job could lead to some […]
Panel I – Antiracist Policy in Consumer Law – March 4, 4:00 PM (All times are CST.) The symposium's first panel will highlight antiracist policy arising in the various areas of consumer law. The panelists' expertise and discussion topics range from historical analysis of racist consumer facing practices to modern analyses of consumer protection most […]
Here. Excerpt (footnotes omitted): As then-Professor Elena Kagan explained in her famous article, “Presidential Administration,” it is the overriding tendency of recent presidents to harness executive agencies’ rulemaking and other authorities and use them as extensions of their own policy and political agendas. Given the CFPB’s broad authorities, its ample funding through the Federal Reserve, […]
Minnesota's Prentiss Cox and Suffolk's Kathleen C. Engel have written Student Loan Reform: Rights Under the Law, Incentives Under Contract, and Mission Failure Under ED, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: The federal student loan program is a disaster. Over five million people are in default even though Congress provides all borrowers with the […]
Charlotte Haendler and Rawley Heimer, both of Boston College's Department of Finance, have written The Financial Restitution Gap in Consumer Finance: Insights from Complaints Filed with the CFPB. Here's the abstract: Consumers seek restitution for disputed financial services by filing complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). We find that filings from low-socioeconomic (i.e., low-income […]
The Conference on Consumer Finance Law and the Program on Financial Regulation & Technology at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School held a webinar recently titled “New Directions for Consumer Finance Law. An Insider’s Look at the Report of the CFPB’s Taskforce.” The speakers included Taskforce members Jean Noonan, Todd Zywicki and William McLeod.
Erik Durbin and Charles J. Romeo, both of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, have written The Economics of Debt Collection, with Attention to the Issue of Salience of Collections at the Time Credit Is Granted, 16 Journal of Credit Risk (2020). Here is the abstract: This paper considers the role of policies that protect consumers from […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Both written and audio versions of the article are available. The article also reports on scam call centers overseas. I hope this is something the Biden administration moves on aggressively in its foreign policy.