The New York Times reports: Across the corporate landscape, the Trump administration has presided over a sharp decline in financial penalties against banks and big companies accused of malfeasance, according to analyses of government data and interviews with more than 60 former and current federal officials. The approach mirrors the administration’s aggressive deregulatory agenda throughout […]
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by Paul Alan Levy A recent trial court decision from New York addresses a question about which I have long held a tentative opinion, albeit without having known of any direct precedent to back up my view: When speaker states facts in an online publication that are not subject to defamation liability when made (because […]
"Wells Fargo & Co will not finish paying back the estimated 600,000 customers it wrongly charged for auto insurance until at least 2020, the bank said in a letter to U.S. lawmakers. … U.S. regulators slapped Wells Fargo with a $1 billion penalty in April when it admitted to wrongly forcing drivers into auto insurance […]
Online student loan refinancer SoFi has agreed to stop misrepresenting how much money student loan borrowers have saved or will save from refinancing their loans with the company, in order to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceptively advertised inflated figures for more than two years. In a complaint against Social Finance, Inc. and […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued a statement about its plans for its payday-loan regulation: The Bureau expects to issue proposed rules in January 2019 that will reconsider the Bureau's rule regarding Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans and address the rule's compliance date. The Bureau will make final decisions regarding the scope of the […]
We've posted many times on the NFL concussion class-action settlement. Go here, for instance. Now there's this story in USA Today saying that some injured former players who qualify for payments under the settlement are getting little or nothing after the lawyers, health-care providers, and other (purported?) lien holders take what they say is theirs (and for other reasons).
We've posted here many times about the massive and growing student-loan debt in this country. Two new pieces might interest our readers. First, Maine is so interested in getting educated people to move to Maine that it will refund most (and often all) student loan repayments through a state tax credit. The program applies to […]
That's the topic of as Glass-Steagall's Demise Inevitable and Unimportant? by law prof Arthur Wilmarth. Here's the abstract: The demise of the Glass-Steagall Act was the result of affirmative policy decisions by federal regulators and Congress, and it was not the inevitable byproduct of market forces. Economic disruptions and financial innovations posed serious challenges to the viability […]
Bloomberg reports: Payday lenders could escape tighter regulation as the Trump-led Consumer Financial Protection bureau considers eliminating a requirement that they first assess borrowers’ ability to repay loans. The CFPB is expected to either propose eliminating the rule’s strict ability to repay standards or delaying their effective date so that they can undergo further review, […]
We’ve covered before the Department of Education’s recent attempt to gut a rule adopted under the Obama administration to help student loan borrowers and rein in for-profit colleges. The regulation, commonly referred to as the borrower defense rule, was supposed to take effect on July 1, 2017. The Department issued a series of delays, which […]