The Department of Education today proposed a new Borrower Defense Rule that would abandon important protections designed to stop for-profit colleges from forcing students to give up their right to take schools to court for wrongdoing by forcing them to arbitrate any claims. Forced arbitration provisions, together with bans on the right of students to […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The class counsel in the NFL football class-action concussion settlement has submitted a status report (with accompanying expert analysis) indicating that, so far, the settlement is providing more benefits to more ex-NFL players (and their families) than had been anticipated when the settlement was approved by the federal courts. Among other data reported, in the […]
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell ponders the Trump Administration's choice of someone with "zero experience in the complicated world of financial regulation or consumer protection" to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Considering consumer protection more broadly, she writes: It’s bizarre. Whenever they get the chance, Republican officials seem intent on bleeding consumers dry. Or […]
by Jeff Sovern The president today issued an executive order creating a Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud within the Department of Justice. It has a large number of members, including the CFPB director and chair of the FTC. Among Its functions are to : (a) provide guidance for the investigation and prosecution […]
The Hill reports that the Mick Mulvaney has chosen Brian Johnson to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's acting deputy director. Johnson had previously served as the CFPB’s principal policy director. He had been hired by Mulvaney last year to rein in and rebrand the controversial regulator. The full article is here.
The Washington Post recently reported on a phenomenon I had not previously been aware of: mass-mailing checks to strangers, that when cashed become high-interest loans. As a trainee at one firm described it, "basically a way of monetizing poor people." The article is here.
That's explained by columnist Michael Hiltzik in Trump's own figures show that Obamacare is working well for the vast majority of enrollees: President Trump brags that he has “gutted” the Affordable Care Act, but statistics released this week by his own Department of Health and Human Services show that it’s holding up well against his onslaught, […]
Our readers are likely aware of the recent controversy about plastic straws. They are bad for the environment (go, for instance, here and here). Seattle recently banned their use (along with the use of plastic utensils) at bars and restaurants. As one advocacy group puts it: Plastic straws are really bad for the ocean. We use over 500 million every day in […]
The Regulatory Review has this article.
by Paul Alan Levy In Hassell v. Bird, the California Supreme Court held this morning, by a narrow margin of four votes to three, that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects Yelp against an injunction compelling it to comply with an injunction that had previously been issued against a Yelp user who had […]