Here is the Consumer Reports story. Excerpt: If a bank employee opens fake accounts and credit cards in your name, as recently happened at Wells Fargo, you may be charged fees for those fake accounts, which you didn't pay because you didn't know the accounts existed. And since you didn't pay those fees, your credit report […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
by Jeff Sovern The country faces many issues which merit attention during the debates. Among them is consumer protection. Failures of consumer law contributed to 2008's Great Recession. Consumer protection is regularly in the headlines (just ask Wells Fargo or Volkswagen). The choice of the next president is likely to have a huge impact on consumer […]
by Jeff Sovern As we noted yesterday, on Tuesday, Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf testified before the Senate Banking Committee about the Wells Fargo Customer Fraud Fiasco. Video is available here and Senator Elizabeth Warren's two rounds of questioning, by themselves, here. I have now listened to Mr. Stumpf's testimony, and I learned that Wells engaged in cross-selling to […]
Here. Excerpt: Republicans don’t like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They opposed the very idea of the watchdog when Elizabeth Warren first proposed its creation, and they have been trying to defang and defund it ever since Congress made her vision into a reality. * * * But CFPB is still facing heat from Republicans […]
by Jeff Sovern As has been widely reported, last week the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million for setting up phony accounts in consumers' names. But that didn't stop the House Financial Services Committee from voting yesterday on a largely party-line vote to adopt the Financial Choice Act, which would gut the Bureau. According to Law360, the […]
From Morning Consult's How Would Democrats Run the Senate Banking Committee?: Remarks over the last year from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the committee’s top Democrat, make it clear that Democrats think they stand a chance at facilitating bipartisan legislation in the financial sector if they take back the Senate for the 115th Congress. Brown, as […]
by Jeff Sovern So says a study from the Glassgow Centre for Population Health, Public Health Implications of Payday Lending. The study's "key messages:" • Payday lending is a contemporary public health concern: the vulnerability of the populations involved, the urgency, scale and growth of the issue coupled with the corrosive nature of personal debt and financial […]
David L. Noll of Rutgers has written Regulating Arbitration, California Law Review, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Arbitration is everywhere, as are calls to regulate its use in consumer and employment contracts. But when should Congress and federal administrative agencies do so? That is, what is the policy rationale for regulating arbitration through federal legislation and agency […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: In 2013, a loan officer at BancorpSouth Bank's Madison, Ala., branch received visits from two people with similar profiles within 10 days of each other, both saying they were first-time home buyers — one white, the other black. The employee allegedly steered the black customer to a smaller […]