That's the topic of Commissioning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by law prof Jolina Cuaresma. Here's the abstract: There has been much debate over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of executive and congressional oversight: its single director removable only for cause and its operations are not subject to appropriations. This paper explains how this […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
by Jeff Sovern The industry and some others often complain about "regulation by enforcement," by which I gather is meant that enforcement agencies bring actions against businesses without having previously given extremely clear notice that, in the agency's view, the conduct that is the subject of the action violates existing law. Director Cordray's CFPB was […]
by Jeff Sovern Link here Excerpt: [T]the bureau proposal would invade consumer privacy by allowing collectors to bombard consumers with demands for payment. Under the proposal, debt collectors could try the consumer’s phone number seven times a week and leave voicemails each time. That may not sound too bad, but the CFPB reports that nearly […]
by Jeff Sovern The more I think about the CFPB's recent proposal to allow debt collectors to leave limited-content messages over the phone, the more I think the proposal has real problems. The proposal would allow debt collectors to leave voicemails or oral messages with whomever answered the phone. To qualify as a limited-content message, […]
Reporter Renae Merle has a story up at the Washington Post about the debt collection rules that the CFPB is expected to unveil “in a few weeks.” The story was prompted, in part, by a recent speech given by CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger during which she “laid out a business-friendly vision for the CFPB.” The […]
by Jeff Sovern This transcript of the young Kathleen Kraninger has recently been unearthed: Adult: Did you eat the chocolate chip cookies? Kraninger: I will stipulate that there were chocolate chip cookies and that they are no longer here. Adult: Did you eat them? Kraninger: I understand what you're getting at. Adult: Did you take […]
Imre S. Szalai of Loyola of New Orleans has written The Prevalence of Consumer Arbitration Agreements by America’s Top Companies, 52 U.C. Davis L. Rev. Online 233 (2019). Here is the abstract: This article present the results of a study that examines the use of arbitration agreements by the top 100 Fortune Magazine-ranked largest domestic […]
That’s the title of a new report from Chris Peterson at the Consumer Federation of America. According to the executive summary: This study analyzes whether the CFPB, under the Trump Administration, is delivering on its statutory law enforcement objectives and stated commitments to take aggressive action in the area of consumer law enforcement, particularly where […]
by Jeff Sovern A post inspired by a question I heard Kathleen Engel ask: every year second-year students ask professors for suggestions for topics to write about for law reviews. Law professors and other lawyers also cast about for article topics. Meanwhile, administrative agencies often confront questions about what the law is or how it […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB's former acting director, Mick Mulvaney, compared the Bureau's public database to Yelp and threatened to take it private, though he never did so. Director Kraninger has not made public her plans for the database, to the best of my knowledge, and so public access to the complaints may still be […]

