Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued its quarterly report on U.S. household debt and credit. It found that—for the 16th straight quarter—aggregate household debt balances increased in the second quarter of 2018. Debt from mortgage loans, auto loans, and credit cards increased, while outstanding student loan debt decreased. On the bright […]
Category Archives: Other Lending, Debt, and Credit Issues
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a distressing story by personal finance reporter Tara Siegel Bernard about the increasing rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy protection. The story relies on a study that was recently released by professors Deborah Thorne of the University of Idaho, Pamela Foohey of the Indiana University Maurer School […]
Norman I. Silber of Hofstra and Steven Stites of Stites & Harbison PLLC have written Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes. Here is the abstract: Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes (MACCS) have existed in one form or another for hundreds of years although without a generic name. At nineteenth century American railroad construction sites far from established […]
by Jeff Sovern I only just found out about Mehrsa Baradaran's terrific interview for the Who Makes Cents podcast. If you haven't made time to read her book, How the Other Half Banks, this will give you a brief introduction. For those who are unfamiliar with podcasts, it is easy to download them to a smartphone […]
by Jeff Sovern So reports MarketWatch. If the bill is enacted, students will effectively have to pay more for student loans and some schools will have a harder time helping with scholarships because their endowments will be smaller than they otherwise would be.
Here. Excerpt: Financial firms, spurred by the Trump administration’s promises to deregulate, hope to return to offering short-term, high-interest loans after being pushed out of the sector by Obama-era rules. Two leading trade groups, the American Bankers Association and Consumer Bankers Association, recently proposed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin several steps they say would encourage […]
Here. As we have noted before, the OCC plays a role in consumer protection, such as joining with the CFPB and LA City Attorney in the investigation into the Wells Fargo phony accounts. The whole article is worth a read, but here is an excerpt: In the early 2000s, banks successfully sued to stop Iowa […]
by Jeff Sovern Earlier, Allison posted a link to an op-ed opposing rescission of the CFPB's prepaid card rule. For readers who would like to hear what opponents of the prepaid card rule argue, here is an op-ed in The Hill by Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty (I wonder who provides their funding). […]
Brian Melzer of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and Aaron Schroeder of the CFPB have written Loan Contracting in the Presence of Usury Limits: Evidence from Automobile Lending. Here is the abstract: We study the effects of interest rate ceilings on the market for automobile loans. We find that loan contracting and the organization of […]
Brad Wolverton's article, Your Wallet Will Suffer If This Agency Is Gutted, is an excellent roundup of the Bureau's accomplishments that cuts across a variety of areas, including student loans, credit cards, debt collection, mortgages, payday loans, credit reporting agencies, auto lending, consumer complaints, military protections, and arbitration. Excerpt: Collectively, for every $1 in federal spending on […]