The New York Times reports: Consumer lending firms that focus on borrowers with weak credit have done surprisingly well in the last few years. Many survived the financial crisis of 2008, the Great Recession, and even went on to post strong profits in the face of an onslaught of new regulations. Now, though, these lenders […]
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The Hill reports: Payday lenders contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to nearly a dozen House Republicans over the last four years, according to the report from Allied Progress, a government accountability organization run by Democratic strategist Karl Frisch. The campaign contributions coincided with votes taken by many of these Republicans that […]
What does a Better Business Bureau rating mean? Not much, according to a expose from CNNMoney posted yesterday. The article gives the following examples of businesses that sported an A+ rating on BBB: A mortgage broker charged by federal regulators with discriminating against minority borrowers. A financial firm accused in an ongoing federal lawsuit of […]
That's the title of this article by Tom Hamburger. Hamburger says his article describes the newest chapter in Senator Warren's "crusade against the power of wealthy interests."
Tomorrow, former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship will stand trial in federal court in West Virginia for allegedly lethal violations of federal mine safety rules. From a Slate preview of the case: Known for his in-your-face policies and politics, Blankenship is accused of creating a ruthless work culture that skimped on safety and employee well-being […]
As fivethirtyeight.com documented earlier this week, in spite of Obamacare’s extensions of health care coverage to millions of previously uninsured Americans, 33 million still don’t have coverage. Who are those people and why aren’t they covered? Some are noncitizen immigrants; others fall into the “Medicaid gap” (referring to the range of “incomes that were too […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Board released today a report outlining widespread servicing failures reported by both federal and private student loan borrowers. According to the CFPB press release: Consumers describe companies using a wide range of sloppy, patchwork practices that can create obstacles to repayment, raise costs, cause distress, and contribute to driving struggling borrowers […]
The New York Times has an estimate: Unlike the ignition defect in General Motors vehicles that caused at least 124 people to die in car crashes, Volkswagen pollution is harder to link to individual deaths. But it is clear to public health researchers that the air pollutants the cars illegally emitted damage health, and they […]
The FTC announced yesterday that it sued weight-loss company Roca Labs in federal court in Florida for making unsubstantiated claims about its products then trying to silence critics using a non-disparagement clause followed up by threats (a subject we've covered numerous times on this blog, see, e.g., here and here). The FTC's press statement explains: In a […]
You might assume, based on our prior discussions of lawsuits over modern day debtors' prison practices in Georgia and Missouri (see here and here) that the practice of jailing people who can't pay court fines and fees is confined to the South. An ACLU report last week discussing practices in New Hampshire shows otherwise. Among […]