Paul Kiel of ProPublica has written When Lenders Sue, Quick Cash Can Turn Into a Lifetime of Debt, which describes how a $1,000 payday loan at 400% interest can become a $40,000 debt. The investigative report not only looks at the plight of individual borrowers but provides a comprehensive review of payday loan court enforcement […]
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This front-page Washington Post investigative report, well worth a read, documents the troubling effect of election-year politics on important regulatory actions. The lede summarizes: The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according […]
Despite that pesky First Amendment, state bars around the country often have tried to limit what lawyers can say in advertising to prospective clients. The Florida Bar has always been a leader in this area. And, now, in rules that went into effect earlier this year, the Florida Bar had decided that ordinary promotional techniques […]
Check out this excellent and gutwrenching Post story, which explains more clearly than most sequester reporting how — and why — the sequester affected different federal programs differently, and tells the story of how four-year-old Kentuckian Carli Hopkins got kicked out of preschool by a federal budget plan adopted because of inertia and accident.
That's the title of this piece in the New Scientist, which reveals another cause of widening economic inequality in the U.S.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued this 168-page compendium of preliminary research on the use of pre-dispute binding mandatory arbitration (BMA) clauses in consumer financial contracts. This document was released as part of CFPB's study on the use of BMA required by section 1028 of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — the law that […]
A fascinating piece, particularly for those of us who didn't live through the struggle to pass the Fair Housing Act. As the website explains: "Where you live is important. It can dictate quality of schools and hospitals, as well as things like cancer rates, unemployment, or whether the city repairs roads in your neighborhood. On […]
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its semi-annual update to the agency's rulemaking agenda. Go here for a nice explanation of the current agenda. Below is the actual agenda, as published on OMB's website, with clickable links to the regulatory materials themselves. CFPB Prerule Stage Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (Regulation C) 3170-AA10 CFPB […]
Read this new report by the National Consumer Law Center, which maintains that incompetence and fraud in the tax preparation industry harms consumers. Here's how NCLC introduces its report: Each year, tens of millions of consumers rely upon paid tax preparers to help them file accurate and compliant tax returns, yet the majority of these […]
That is the headline for one of today's lead stories in the satirical journal The Daily Currant. The story is untrue, but sometimes satire drives home a point because what is satirical also seems plausible. After all, here, we know that Wal-Mart often doesn't pay enough for its employees to support themselves, let alone their […]