by Jeff Sovern Last Friday, I posted a comment on Alan Kaplinsky’s remarks, quoted in the Bloomberg Business story, Bank Customers May Get Their Day in Court, about the CFPB arbitration report. Alan replied in a post captioned “Sovern v. Kaplinsky.” Here I offer a rebuttal. In my original post, I expressed the view that […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB's field hearing on payday lending is underway, and is being livestreamed at the Bureau's website. Watch it here.
by Jeff Sovern Not that I need one, but my question is prompted by my expectation that during the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus's field hearing today on payday lending, the Bureau will propose new restrictions on payday lending. Critics may claim that the restrictions will drive consumers to loan sharks. For a past example of […]
by Jeff Sovern According to ThinkAdvisor, Georgia Senator David Perdue has introduced an amendment that would subject the CFPB to the congressional appropriations process. Calling the Bureau "reckless," Perdue added "the CFPB is a rogue agency that dishes out malicious financial policy and creates new rules and regulations without any oversight from Congress. As seems […]
The CFPB arbitration report found that class actions can return significant sums to consumers. Adding to the literature on that topic, Brian T. Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt and Robert C. Gilbert have written An Empirical Look at Compensation in Consumer Class Actions. Here is the abstract: Consumer class actions are under broad attack for providing little in […]
by Jeff Sovern Here we go again. The Republicans have repeatedly tried to convert the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to a commission structure. The latest effort, H.R. 1266, is sponsored by Representative Randy Neugebauer of Texas. The bill would replace the CFPB's director with a five-member commission, of whom no more than three could be […]
by Jeff Sovern BloombergBusiness columnist Carter Dougherty has a story, Bank Customers May Get Their Day in Court, about the CFPB arbitration report. Dougherty writes: In its report, the CFPB noted that there were just 52 arbitration claims under $1,000 in 2010 and 2011, and consumers won relief in just four of them. Says [Deepak] […]
Prolific class action scholar (and former Scalia clerk) Brian Fitzpatrick of Vanderbilt Law has just posted to SSRN an interesting new paper foreseeing and lamenting the effects of his former boss's handiwork in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors (both cases in which I had the privilege of representing the losing […]
Here. An excerpt: In the Big Business narrative, arbitration is a far better place for consumers than a nasty-wasty court. Lack of choice is a better choice! Well, this week, a big, fat government report blew that fiction away. * * * Companies, it turns out, weren't using mandatory arbitration clauses to protect us. […]
The following consumer advocates will be live-tweeting today's CFPB field hearing on arbitration, which gets underway at 11am. Ellen Taverna, NACA – @NACAdvocate Christine Hines, Public Citizen – @chrhines Michelle Schwartz, Alliance for Justice – @SchwartzAFJ NCLC – @NCLC4consumers AFR – @realbankreform You should also be able to watch a web livestream of the hearing here.