That's the topic of Commissioning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by law prof Jolina Cuaresma. Here's the abstract: There has been much debate over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s lack of executive and congressional oversight: its single director removable only for cause and its operations are not subject to appropriations. This paper explains how this […]
The National Association of Consumer Advocates has created this series of five videos on debt defense. The videos educate ordinary consumers on how to deal with debt collection. Click on the links or on the embedded videos below to watch all five videos. Consumers can get other debt-collection information from NACA here. 1. Dealing with […]
As you'll recall, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) significantly expanded Medicaid — the War on Poverty legislation that had, for decades, provided comprehensive medical insurance to (certain) poor people. Among other things, the ACA Medicaid expansion required state Medicaid programs to cover all adults with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Before […]
"Equifax has agreed to pay as much as $700 million to settle a series of state and federal investigations into a massive 2017 data breach that left more than 147 million Americans’ Social Security numbers, credit-card details and other sensitive information exposed. The punishment includes payments to affected consumers, fines to peeved regulators and a […]
The Sixth Circuit held today in Keen v. Helson that because the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act's text gives a right to sue only to a "borrower," someone who signs the mortgage but does not sign the mortgage loan with the lender is not a "borrower" (and so can't sue under RESPA).
by Jeff Sovern Many consumer laws require that businesses make "clear and conspicuous" disclosures. See, e.g., Reg Z, 12 C.F.R. 1026.17(a)(1) (closed-end loans). But increasingly, consumers are obtaining loans through mobile phones. How can any disclosure on those tiny screens be clear and conspicuous? When the Fed thought about this issue back in 2007, it […]
Matthew A. Bruckner of Howard has written Preventing Predation & Encouraging Innovation in Fintech Lending. Here is the abstract: More than 20 years ago, IBM's Deep Blue vanquished chess grandmaster and reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, in a pair of best-of-six matches. Since then, numerous companies have invested large sums of money to develop additional […]
This Washington Post article by Faiz Siddiqui explains that "Tesla is racing to be first to the market with a self-driving car made for the masses, promising to send as soon as this year an over-the-air software update that will turn hundreds of thousands of its vehicles into robo-cars." Yet, "a dozen transportation officials and […]
by Jeff Sovern Norm Silber of Hosfstra has pointed out to me that the New York legislature has passed two consumer protection bills that await Governor Cuomo's signature. One, S03704, would amend New York's existing Plain Language Law to require that consumer contracts involving up to $250,000 be written "in a clear and coherent manner […]
In a lengthy article today, the Detroit Free Press reports: Ford Motor Co. knowingly launched two low-priced, fuel-efficient cars with defective transmissions and continued selling the troubled Focus and Fiesta despite thousands of complaints and an avalanche of repairs, a Free Press investigation found. The cars, many of which randomly lose power on freeways and have […]