by Jeff Sovern Evan Weinberger reports here. The bill's text is not yet available at Govtrack. I wonder if the bill would also apply to consumers who have not lost their jobs or had hours cut back because of the pandemic, and if so, what incentives it would create for them.
The Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are co-hosting a webinar focusing on student loan repayment during the coronavirus pandemic. More information and registration here.
Hofstra's Norm Silber, who studied gift cards and other merchant cash substitutes for his article, Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes, 14 University of Virginia Law & Business Review (2019), urges consumers to spend their gift cards online. He points out that [A] gift card always involves insolvency risks, but the problem has never been as […]
Jacqueline Howard of CNN explains here that "the US Food and Drug Administration issued a final rule Tuesday that requires tobacco companies to place new graphic health warnings on cigarette packages and in advertisements. Beginning on June 18, 2021, the new cigarette health warnings will be required on cigarette packages and in advertisements, occupying the […]
After Katrina, Norm Silber wrote an article, Debts, Disasters, and Delinquencies: The Case for a Mandatory Force Majeure Provision in Consumer Credit Agreements, and for a Consumer Credit Insurance Fund, 34 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 1 (2010), which has lessons for consumer protection as we grapple with the coronavirus. Here […]
by Jeff Sovern Yesterday, as part of his response to the coronavirus, President Trump announced that he was temporarily waiving "interest on all student loans held by federal government agencies." According to the NY Times, monthly payments won't change. Instead, the monthly payments will go to reducing the principal, which will ultimately reduce the amount […]
Trump tweeted yesterday that "Only [suspending the payroll tax] will make a big difference!" (my emphasis). Yet Congress appears uninterested. And Trump himself just endorsed Nancy Pelosi's bill, which doesn't touch the payroll tax. For more on why, on policy grounds, Trump didn't get his way, read Why Trump isn’t getting the payroll-tax cut he […]
by Jeff Sovern The coronavirus is already having an impact on consumers and consumer protection. Some initial observations: The FTC and FDA have sent warning letters to companies reportedly making deceptive or unsupported claims about their products' ability to treat the coronanvirus. It's good that they're on the job. There have been reports of discrimination against Asians […]
Will Trump sign or veto? That topic is addressed in this article by CNN's Katie Lobosco. For other coverage, go here and here. This NYT's piece by Erica Green and Stacy Cowley does a nice job explaining the restrictive DeVos rule. Here's an excerpt from the CNN article: Senate Republicans joined Democrats Wednesday to overturn a […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB recently proposed various disclosures to include on validation notices pertaining to time-barred debt. Before doing so, the Bureau retained ICF International to test the notices empirically; this testing found that the notices enabled many respondents to better understand certain rights as to time-barred debt. So far, so good. But the […]