by Brian Wolfman Think about these things: The "tax gap." In 2006, the "tax gap" — the difference between the taxes owed by Americans and the taxes that they pay — was a stunning $450 billion. The IRS then went out and enforced the tax laws and recovered $65 billion, making the net tax gap […]
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by Jeff Sovern Today's Times Haggler column, Calling Out the Robocaller, written by David Segal, and about a troublesome telemarketer, Your Financial Ladder, operated by the Helfenstines, includes an ominous discussion about the effectiveness of a Florida consumer protection agency: [A] spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says it recently started an investigation […]
Read this story by Jessica Silver-Greenberg. She reports that just as 15 U.S. states have banned payday loans, some of the world's biggest banks are playing a key role in facilitating the loans in a way that aims to evade those states' laws. Here's an excerpt: Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based […]
by Paul Alan Levy Our experience at Public Citizen has been that objectors to proposed class action settlements can often expect a hostile reception. Both named plaintiffs and defendants – and their lawyers — generally have a common stake in getting the settlement approved, and they have developed a relationship with the judge already. The […]
Last year, Charles Schwab modified its customer account agreements to prohibit class-action suits and bar consolidation of individual arbitrations. FINRA — the financial industry regulatory authority — then charged Schwab with violating FINRA's rules. As we previously reported, Schwab challenged FINRA's action in district court, but the court dismissed the suit for failure to exhaust […]
by Brian Wolfman After the Supreme Court's decision last June largely upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we asked this question: Which states, if any, will back out of the Medicaid expansion? As you will recall, the Supreme Court ruled 7-to-2 that the states have the right to back out of the ACA's large Medicaid […]
Read this piece by Jessie Eisinger of ProPublica. Eisinger begins by noting that there's a lot of discussion about the revolving door between industry and agency appointees. He refers to one instance that's gotten a lot of press: Mary Jo White's appointment to head the SEC. Aftter serving "as a tough United States attorney," Eisigner […]
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray spoke today at the the CFPB Advisory Board's first meeting of 2013. He discussed the CFPB's current priorities, including unequal access to credit for minorities, deceptive marketing of consumer financial products, and debt traps. He also touched on the Bureau's efforts to be transparent, to respond to consumer […]
As explained here (an interview with one of the authors), law professors William Bratten and Adam Levitin think so. The full article is here. Here is the abstract: Three scandals have reshaped business regulation over the past thirty years: the securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken in 1988, the Enron implosion of 2001, and the […]
This morning the Supreme Court will hear argument in McBurney v. Young, which presents the question whether under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV and the dormant Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution a state may limit the right of access to the state's public records to its own citizens. We have […]