by Jeff Sovern Here. My favorite sentence points out that in an average year, "[a]t least 6,800,000 consumers get cash relief in class actions—compared with just 16 consumers who receive cash relief in arbitration, according to available data." Here is a longer excerpt: Opponents of the rule have suggested that the bureau’s own findings show consumers […]
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern The Hill reports that Hensarling has demanded an investigation into whether Cordray violated election law. This follows the Financial Services Committee (chaired by Hensarling) staff report saying the Committee should consider holding Cordray in contempt (a story on the CFPB reply is here). And if you listen to the Committee's hearings during which […]
by Jeff Sovern Last week, Gretchen Morgenson at the Times broke the story of how hundreds of thousands of auto loan borrowers at Wells Fargo had been charged for car insurance they didn't need. Now Kate Berry at the American Banker reports on the arbitration connection: it turns out that many of the contracts provide […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Biden's Briefing is a podcast which plays "[w]hat Joe wants you to know. Every day, Vice President Joe Biden looks to the news across the nation that's sparking conversation, sharing the articles and opinions that he's reading and might be of interest to you." For today's episode, he chose the essay […]
by Jeff Sovern Law360's Evan Weinberger has the story here. The rule still could be blocked by Congress under the Congressional Review Act or in the courts. One down, two to go.
by Jeff Sovern Republican pollster Robert Carpenter has written Republicans beware: Your voters like tough rules on Wall Street in the Washington Examiner. Excerpt: Republicans do the bidding of Wall Street at their own peril. That is the message of a new poll that I helped conduct around financial reform and consumer protection last month […]
Here. The first three paragraphs read: The early results from a recent study that Kent Grayson, a Northwestern University marketing professor, did on consumer skepticism left him feeling a little, well, skeptical. So he ran the trials a few more times. Each time, when participants were asked what they thought of modern advertising techniques, they […]
Gregory Klass of Georgetown critiques the draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts treatment of privacy policies in The Quantitative Study of Privacy-Policy Decisions in the Draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts. Here is the abstract: The draft Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts includes six quantitative studies of judicial decisions, each used to support a rule […]
Josh Lauer has written Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America. Here's the publisher's description: The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing […]
Then take a look at this story from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity: Who is killing the CFPB’s arbitration rule? Excerpt: The financial industry’s hefty investment in the campaigns of House members appeared to pay off this week when that chamber voted to kill a new rule that allows consumers to file class-action lawsuits […]