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.
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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 […]
Mick Mulvaney, at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cut in half a fine that his Obama-era predecessor sought against a payday lender and dropped some of the agency’s earlier claims in the case, three people familiar the matter told Reuters. Reuter's article is here.
The New York Times reports that Equifax has agreed to a consent order with eight state financial regulators in response to the breach that allowed hackers to steal sensitive personal information on more than 147 million people last year. The order describes specific steps that Equifax must take, including conducting security audits at least once […]
A new report from the think tank New America finds that basic banking services such as opening and maintaining a checking account can cost substantially more if you are black or Latino. For instance, community banks in predominantly black neighborhoods require an average minimum opening deposit of about $80, compared with about $68 in white […]
The Hill reports that a judge has ordered the Department of Education to stop collecting debts from all students defrauded by the for-profit Corinthian College, which shut down in 2015. "The court ruled in May that the Department of Education had violated privacy laws by using Social Security Administration information to help it determine how […]