by Brian Wolfman This article by the Consumerist's Chris Morran explains that, in her first Senate Banking Committee hearing, senior Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren "grilled a panel of regulators on their tendency to settle with law-breaking banks rather than go to trial. … Sen. Warren explained her stance that if banks reap billions of profits […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
In light of the steady march toward maximum judicial enforcement of arbitration clauses, perhaps nothing should surprise us anymore, but a recent federal district court decision caught the eyes of several of us here at CL&P Blog. This decision, from the Southern District of Ohio, ruled that a dispute was subject to arbitration even though […]
Remember the Big Spring suit? That's the case challenging various provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall St. reform law, including the legality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, on separation-of-powers grounds. That suit includes, but is by no means limited to, a challenge to Richard Cordray's appointment as CFPB director as an impermissible (non-)recess appointment. The […]
That's the name of this report from the Institute of Medicine (eds. Lawrence Gostin and Gillian Buckley). The Food and Drug Administration and similar regulatory agencies around the world seek to protect consumers by approving drugs only if they are reasonably safe and effective for their intended uses. But that objective is undermined when bad […]
by Jeff Sovern You can read Senator Rubio's speech here. Here's the key language: "a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies." He doesn't specify the policies, but he's probably referring to the old, thoroughly debunked, claim that the CRA caused the subprime crisis, something the Republican presidential […]
In a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Massachusetts Secretary William Galvin is asking the SEC to consider a ban on binding pre-dispute arbitration clauses in investor advisor contracts, citing a survey that found them prevalent in contracts between investment advisers and their clients. In the alternative, Galvin asks that the SEC undertake […]
As the New York Times pointed out (as we noted yesterday), Republicans have continued to oppose the work (and existence) of the CFPB. So I was a little surprised to hear Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's State of the Union response last night include this exhortation: "Today, many graduates face massive student debt. We must give […]
This report — entitled Dangerous Liasons — published on Monday by the Project on Government Oversight strongly suggests that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been compromised in its duty to protect the public by the influence exerted by former SEC employees now in private industry. Here is the report's overview (some of which continues […]
That's the topic of this sobering article by Michael Fletcher. The econony bottom out about four years ago, but official unemployment rates — which don't count the millions who have given up looking for work — are still really high. That rate is 9.2% in North Carolina, and yet, because of what legislators claim is […]
We have posted here and here on the new FTC study showing that Americans' credit reports are often inaccurate in harmful ways. Now, read the study itself — all 370 pages of it. And take a look at this article on the study by Todd Ruger. There, Ira Rheingold, the head of the National Association of […]