On Tuesday, Scott posted a N.Y. Times op-ed describing a worsening U.S. student-loan debt problem. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also concerned. Yesterday, it posted a piece entitled New signs of trouble for student loan borrowers, focusing not only on debt burden and default rates, but also on problems student-loan debtors have with loan servicers — […]
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"The Federal Trade Commission and consumer protection agencies in 33 other countries that are part of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) unveiled an updated version of ICPEN’s econsumer.gov to help law enforcement authorities gather and share cross border consumer complaints that can be used to investigate and take action against international scams. […]
October 6, 2015: Government Files Enforcement Actions against Two California Companies and Three Individuals to Stop Importation of Dangerous Children's Products October 6, 2015: Two Sentenced for Roles in Prescription Drug Smuggling Ring October 1, 2015: Former Peanut Company Officials Sentenced to Prison for Their Roles in Salmonella-Tainted Peanut Product Outbreak September 25, 2015: District […]
A Times op-ed observes: [T]wo weeks ago, the Education Department released a trove of new data suggesting that the system is failing and that, at some colleges, the saddling of students with loans they cannot afford to pay down is far more dire than anyone knew. The loan crisis hits hardest at colleges enrolling large […]
Our country had a financial transaction tax for half a century, the report recounts, but it was repealed in 1965 even though it wasn't hindering growth. Reinstating such a tax would slow down the type of quick-trading speculation that caused the 2010 "flash crash" and it would have provided $22 billion in revenue per year […]
Read here the surprising story of a blogger who showed up at the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), having let the Commission know he was coming, to conduct an interview regarding the IOGCC's position on climate change. The only interview he got was with the police, as the result of a 9-1-1 call.
Read this fascinating investigative report from the L.A. Times, documenting the dissonance between Exxon's public position on global warming and its private studies undertaken to maintain competitiveness in a world they assumed would be warming. The upshot: As [an internal] team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company’s operations, Exxon and […]
The text is available here. Public Citizen explains how bad it is for access to lifesaving medicines.
Represented by Public Citizen, CSPI filed suit yesterday in federal court in DC to compel action by FDA on CSPI's citizen petition to reduce the alarming amount of salt to which U.S. consumers are exposed. The petition has been pending for 10 years, and FDA's foot-dragging dates back far longer, explains CSPI in its press […]
The FDA had gotten 125 complaints prior to the recall, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Still, in an era when companies stubbornly resist potentially safe-saving recalls (think Takata air bags), it's good news that this recall was relatively expeditious.