On August 6, New York's financial regulatory agency took aim at online payday lenders, who "offer short-term loans at interest rates that often exceed 500 percent annually." As the New York Times reported, the state's financial regulator sent letters to 35 of the online lenders, instructing them to “cease and desist” from offering loans that […]
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As you may have read, and as described in this article by Michael Gormley, "New York's attorney general sued Donald Trump for $40 million Saturday, saying the real estate mogul helped run a phony 'Trump University' that promised to make students rich but instead steered them into expensive and mostly useless seminars, and even failed […]
That's the tagline for New York's health care marketplace established under the Affordable Care Act. New York is one of 14 states that has created a variety of health plans for uninsured people available for purchase under the Act. Subsidies mandated by the Act are available for poor and moderate-income people. For people in states […]
Beginning his remarks by saying that "[t]his is probably controversial to say, but what the heck, I'm in my second term so I can say it," President Obama said today that law school should probably be two years rather than the current three because that would save law students a lot of money. Read more […]
About a year ago, Public Citizen petitioned for rehearing in a case in which a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a First Amendment retaliation claim brought by a police officer who courageously spoke out after he witnessed the abuse of suspects within his department. In a welcome development this week, […]
As we've discussed several times since March, the Supreme Court's decision this spring in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend has provided fodder for a new and dangerous argument that a damages class cannot be certified whenever the damages must be calculated individually. District court decisions have been mixed on this question, but so far the response […]
The Blog of LegalTimes reports: When Morgan Drexen Inc. found itself in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crosshairs, the company, which works with law firms to provide debt relief services to consumers, initiated a response that's proving to be both unusually aggressive and public. The CFPB filed suit against the company earlier this week in […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday issued this report "detailing mortgage servicing problems at banks and nonbanks. The report also found that many nonbanks lack robust systems for ensuring they are following federal laws." (quoting press release) According to the CFPB's press release, the agency found Sloppy account transfers: The rights to manage a loan […]
This article by Michael Fletcher discusses a new report showing that incomes in the U.S. haven't come close to recovering from the government-determined official end of the recession in mid-2009. Here's an excerpt and then two charts depicting income levels and unemployment over the last 12 and 1/2 years: The buying power of Americans continues […]
by Brian Wolfman We have covered the interaction between consumer protection law and efforts to stem the obesity epidemic, including NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to ban large-sized sugary drinks (which has failed so far in the New York courts). If that topic interests you, I think you'll want to watch two videos, which are […]