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 […]
by Jeff Sovern I posted on SSRN the results of the survey I previously blogged about, The Content of Consumer Law Classes III. This follows similar surveys in 2008 and 2010 (I bet you can guess what their titles are). The abstract for the new version reads as follows: This paper reports on a 2018 survey of law […]
by Jeff Sovern According to HousingWire, the CFPB has informed Zillow that it is dropping its investigation into Zillow for RESPA violations. We know about this because of a Zillow SEC filing. We will never know how many CFPB investigations have been dropped into companies that are not subject to SEC filing requirements. Nor can […]
by Jeff Sovern AccountsRecovery.Net has a story, Mulvaney Lobbying Hard For Kraninger, Despite Saying He Wants To Stay Out of Process, which reports: Mulvaney has spoken out publicly in favor of Kraninger’s nomination and the report [in The Hill] said that Mulvaney has reached out to several Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, which will […]
Joseph Sanders and Vijay Raghavan, both of the Office of the Illinois Attorney General have written Improvident Student Lending, Utah Law Review (2018). Here is the abstract: The idea that lending without regard to ability to repay should be illegal is not particularly new, but it gained purchase in recent years with the rapid growth of high-cost […]
Anne Fleming of Georgetown has written The Long History of 'Truth in Lending', 30 Journal of Policy History (2018). Here's the abstract: This article offers the first comprehensive history of the development of mandatory disclosure rules for the cost of consumer credit. In contrast to prior studies, which begin with the creation of federal disclosure rules […]
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 […]
by Jeff Sovern Allison blogged earlier about Judge Preska's decision striking down the CFPB as unconstitutional and I've been wondering what it means for consumers. I hope some of our readers will offer their own thoughts in the comments, because I'm still trying to figure this out. As a formal matter, in terms of the […]
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 […]
In a case brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the State of New York, a judge in the Southern District of New York held today that the structure of the CFPB is unconstitutional because it is an independent agency that has substantial executive power and a single director. Judge Loretta Perska further held […]