by Jeff Sovern The article is here. From being a data-driven agency, the Bureau has become a politics-driven agency. No doubt the payday industry was not hurt by spending money at a Trump hotel. The Times also reproduces the memo in question. I hope the House Financial Services Committee quickly convenes a hearing, online or […]
Category Archives: Predatory Lending
Jim Hawkins of Houston has written Earned Wage Access and the End of Payday Lending. Here is the abstract: Fintech companies have developed a financial product that allows employees to gain access to wages that they have already earned before their scheduled payday. The fee for getting an earned wage advance is usually small, making this […]
David Dayen has the story in The American Prospect. Here's an excerpt, but the entire story is worth a look: It may seem axiomatic, but it’s rarely stated out loud: Businesses that rely on poor people need the economic system to keep churning out poor people to survive. You almost have to applaud the payday […]
Here. Excerpt: Across Utah, high-interest lenders filed 66% of all small claims cases heard between September 2017 and September 2018, according to a new analysis of court records conducted by a team led by Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and the financial services director at the Consumer Federation of America, […]
Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard has written Preventing Predation & Encouraging Innovation in Fintech Lending. Here is the abstract: More than 20 years ago, IBM's Deep Blue vanquished chess grandmaster and reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a pair of best-of-six matches. Since then, numerous companies have invested large sums of money to develop additional […]
Andrew T. Hayashi of Virginia has written Consumer Law Myopia. Here is the abstract: People make mistakes with debt, partly because the chance to buy now and pay later tempts them to do things that are not in their long-term interest. Lenders sell credit products that exploit this vulnerability. In this Article, I argue that critiques […]
Today, my colleagues at U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Frontier Group released a new report, “Driving Into Debt: The Hidden Cost of Risky Auto Loans to Consumers and Our Communities.” According to the executive summary (emphasis in original): In much of America, access to a car is all but required to hold a job […]
by Jeff Sovern My colleague, Vincent DiLorenzo, has written Fintech Lending: A Study of Expectations Versus Market Outcomes, Forthcoming in Review of Banking & Financial Law. Here is the abstract: This paper documents the expectations for the fintech lending industry, which has emerged in this decade, and compares such expectations to market outcomes. It presents an […]
Shmuel I. Becher of Victoria University of Wellington, Yuval Feldman of Bar-Ilan University and Orly Lobel of San Diego have written Poor Consumer(s) Law: The Case of High-Cost Credit and Payday Loans in Legal Applications of Marketing Theory, Jacob Gersen & Joel Steckel, eds., Cambridge University Press (2019, Forthcoming). Here's the abstract: Consumers in general, and […]
by Jeff Sovern That's the question David Dayen raises in an important essay in InTheseTimes, Trump Appointees Are Pushing a Deregulation Plan That Could Dramatically Erode Consumer Protections. As Dayen points out, in the run-up to the Great Recession, the OCC proclaimed that state anti-predatory lending laws were preempted as to national banks. We know […]