After reading the post below, reader Ted Mermin of California Low-Income Consumer Coalition emailed: Last week the Governor signed a groundbreaking law providing an automatic exemption from bank levy for the last $1724 in a debtor’s account. According to the law’s findings, debt collectors routinely clean out consumers’ bank accounts, leaving nothing to pay for […]
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California's Governor Newsom today signed into law legislation intended to to protect consumers from predatory lending practices that create debt traps for families already struggling financially. The bill bars payday lenders from charging high interest rates – which in the past have soared as high as 200 percent – on loans between $2,500 and $10,000. […]
Next week, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger will deliver the statutory “Semi-Annual Report of the CFPB” to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee. On his blog, US PIRG's Ed Mierzwinski suggests questions that the committee members should ask, here.
A federal court has entered a temporary restraining order against Utah-based Zurixx, LLC and affiliated companies, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection (DCP) allege have used deceptive promises of big profits to lure consumers into real estate seminars costing thousands of dollars. The order prohibits Zurixx from making […]
Despite a court order barring the Education Department from collecting on the federal student loans of former Corinthian College students, the agency continued to pursue the debts. Some former students had their paychecks garnished or tax refunds seized by the government. The students' recently moved to hold Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt. DeVos and […]
by Paul Alan Levy It always happens during the presidential election season. This year, a bogus DMCA takedown was aimed at a video posted to Twitter by Donald Trump. Promoting his wild conspiracy theories about potential election opponent Joseph Biden, Trump fiddled with the first fifteen seconds of the video for the Nickelback musical number […]
Damian Paletta at the Washington Post has written Federal government has dramatically expanded exposure to risky mortgages, effectively asking whether conditions are forming for another homeowner mortgage crisis of the severity associated with the Great Recession. Some excerpts: The federal government has dramatically expanded its exposure to risky mortgages, as federal officials over the past […]
This article by Amy Goldstein describes "an emerging mosaic of evidence that, nearly a decade after it became one of the most polarizing health-care laws in U.S. history, the ACA is making some Americans healthier — and less likely to die."
by Paul Alan Levy The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently upheld the rights of litigants to use public pressure to discourage companies from suing them. The issue arose in Bank of Hope v. Chon, when a bank sued one of its departed founders, after an employee who was fired for […]
The House just passed a bill that would restore legal rights to millions of workers and consumers. By a vote of 225-186, the House passed the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, to ban companies from requiring workers and consumers to resolve legal disputes in private arbitration. Arbitration is a process with no judge, no […]