That's the topic of this article by consumer reporter Michelle Singletary. It includes this hypothetical underscoring how the cost of credit can differ based on one's credit score: Let’s look at a person taking out an auto loan who has a subprime credit score below 600 (on a scale of 300 to 850, the highest score being […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Starting today, consumers who are concerned about identity theft or data breaches can freeze their credit and place one-year fraud alerts for free. The Federal Trade Commission explains, here.
American Airlines is threatening to prohibit customers from making changes to nonrefundable tickets if Congress makes good on a proposal to crack down on what critics call unreasonable airline fees. The NYT article is here.
Law prof Richard Frankel has written The Federal Arbitration Act and Independent Contractors, which takes up an issue before the Supreme Court in New Prime v. Oliveira. Here's the abstract of Frankel's article: The misclassification of employees as independent contractors is one of the most serious problems affecting the American workforce. Wrongly labeling workers as independent contractors […]
The New York Times reports: After the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, started scaling back consumer protections for student borrowers last year, six states and the District of Columbia sped up their own efforts to crack down on abusive lending practices by companies that administer federal loan programs. Now Ms. DeVos is trying to stop them. […]
The Hill reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on Congress to come up with a federal privacy standard in order to preempt states from passing their own laws governing data collection. The article is here.
In a new article, The Discovery Tax, law prof Brian Fitzpatrick proposes a litigation discovery tax. Generally, the scheme would impose more tax on consumer, civil-rights, and other plaintiffs (because plaintiffs tend to have more to discover from defendants than the other way around). Here is the abstract: The American civil discovery regime is what […]
The Washington Post, addressing the current work of the CFPB and the Department of Education, had editorials yesterday and today pertinent to student loans and higher education: Read "The Trump administration’s scandalous handling of student loans," here. Read "How Betsy DeVos could trigger another financial meltdown," here. The New York Times, addressing proposed changes by […]
Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group, said consumers cannot rely only on the organic seal from the USDA. The group says that the USDA is failing to protect ethical industry participants and consumers from fraud. Food Safety News has the story, here.