Read this NY Times op-ed by Georgetown Law's John Brooks entitled Don’t Let the G.O.P. Dismantle Obama’s Student Loan Reforms. Here's an excerpt (but read the whole thing): One of the most important — but least known — achievements of the Obama administration was the expansion of the income-driven repayment program for federal student loans. The program […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Mick Mulvaney, the director of Office of Management and Budget whom President Donald Trump’s has running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sinxe CFPB director Richard Cordray stepped down, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the CFPB, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press. Mulvaney […]
We've blogged many times on the idea of taxing sugary drinks to stem the obesity/diabetes epidemic. Go, for instance, here and here. Critics claimed that these so-called soda taxes would do little to improve health while hurting grocers, particularly small grocers, who would get pummeled by consumers cutting back on purchases of sugary drinks. Nonetheless some cities enacted […]
In a detailed and informative post entitled Judge Declares Some PACER Fees Illegal but Does Not Go Far Enough, open-courts activist Steve Schultze says explains that Five years ago, in a post called “Making Excuses for Fees on Electronic Public Records,” I described my attempts to persuade the federal Judiciary to stop charging for access […]
In case you missed the punchline of Jeff Sovern's post on the CFPB's annual report, the news is not the report itself (which conscientiously recites the CFPB's actions between February and September 2017, before Mick Mulvaney was appointed Acting Director following Richard Cordray's departure), but the cover letter, in which Mulvaney proposes that Congress gut […]
by Jeff Sovern Apparently the Lucchese Organized Crime Family charges less than a quarter of what payday lenders charge. Last week, New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced indictments of ten members of the group in the largest loansharking investigation in the office's history. Schneiderman's press release reports: [U]surious interest payouts exceed[ed] a million […]
Many of our readers no doubt have read that Scott Pruitt (EPA head and climate change denier) is planning to scrap the Obama Administration's fuel-economy targets aimed at making cars more fuel efficient (and, in turn, having some positive effect on climate change). This article by Evan Halper explains that California plans to stick with the higher […]
by Paul Alan Levy Despite the passage of the Consumer Review Fairness Act in December 2016, businesses continue to use non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses in form contracts to suppress criticism of their products and services. This blog post summarizes several situations in which we have been involved recently. Premier Pools and Spas in Dallas The […]
From Kenosha News (WI), "Group rallies against high-interest lending practices in Kenosha, state" (March 27), here. From Akron Beacon Journal / Ohio.com, "Editorial: Real regulation for payday lenders" (March 26), here. From Wall Street Journal, "Florida Gives Payday Lenders a Boost" (March 19), here. From Nonprofit Quarterly, "Florida Senate Backs Changes in Payday Loans that […]
Louisville consumer lawyer Ben Carter just wrote this opinion piece for the Louisville Courier-Journal on the Trump Administration’s efforts to roll back state-specific consumer protections on payday lending and student loan debt servicing.