The New York Times reports: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is proposing a rule requiring automakers put labels on sun visors of all new vehicles with instructions on how to file safety complaints. The labels would be glued to passenger visors and tell people that complaints could bring an investigation or a possible recall. […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
by Jeff Sovern More from The Hill here. Excerpt: Trump has tapped tech experts Jeff Eisenach and Mark Jamison, two critics of net neutrality, to head his transition team for the Federal Communications Commission. So far, Trump's appointments in consumer protection positions seem to oppose consumer protection.
The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, requires EPA to publish by December 19, 2016, a list of chemicals for review. Today, EPA announced the first ten chemicals it will evaluate for potential risks to human health and the environment under TSCA.The […]
In the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a bulletin warning banks that creating incentives for employees and service providers to meet sales and other business goals can lead to consumer harm. "Tying bonuses or employment status to unrealistic sales goals or to the terms of transactions may […]
Law prof David Noll has written The CFPB's Arbitration Rule: The Road Ahead. Here is the abstract: In May 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it intended to exercise its authority under the Dodd-Frank Act to bar consumer financial companies from invoking pre-dispute arbitration agreements to block consumer class actions. This comment considers the […]
We have blogged several times (for instance, here and here) about the new U.S. Labor Department rule that significantly raises the pay threshold that triggers exceptions to the general rule that workers must be paid 1.5 times their ordinary pay for every hour they work over 40 per week. In plain English, that means overtime pay for […]
That's the topic of These Professors Make More Than a Thousand Bucks an Hour Peddling Mega-Mergers, a ProPublica piece by Jesse Eisinger and Justin Elliott. The sub-title of the piece summarizes its thesis: "The economists are leveraging their academic prestige with secret reports justifying corporate concentration. Their predictions are often wrong and consumers pay the price." […]
MarketWatch has a new article explaining why forced arbitration provisions have keep students at for-profit colleges from "get[ting] a Trump University-type outcome" when the students have alleged that their schools have defrauded them. The article also discusses the Department of Education's new rule cutting federal funding to schools that use forced arbitration provisions with their […]
From an op-ed in today's Times, Climate Change in Trump’s Age of Ignorance, by Robert N. Proctor (behind paywall): [S]science was one of the instruments used by Big Tobacco to carry out its denial (and distraction) campaign. Cigarette makers had met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on Dec. 14, 1953, to plan […]
Associated Press reports: New York's attorney general says President-elect Donald Trump has agreed to a $25 million settlement to resolve three lawsuits over Trump University, his former school for real estate investors. The deal announced Friday by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would settle two class-action lawsuits in California and a civil suit filed by Schneiderman. […]