As most of you likely know, Trump's Treasury Department has floated the idea of indexing capital gains to inflation, thereby reducing the tax due from owners of stocks and other investments when they sell those investments at a gain. (The administration has even suggested that this change could be done administratively, without congressional approval.) As this […]
That's the name of this LA Times article by David Lazurus, which explains that Americans of all political stripes support a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A survey conducted for Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending shows "that an overwhelming majority of Americans — at least 80% — are concerned about the Trump administration’s […]
Today, the Center for Responsible Lending released a new report examining the repayment experiences of borrowers of longer-term payday loans in Colorado. The report is based on focus groups that were conducted in four Colorado cities in September 2017. The full report is worth the read, but here are the key takeaways: In many cases, […]
by Jeff Sovern David Dayen has coined the phrase, the "Mulvaney Discount," to describe the tendency of CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney to settle cases for less than the original amount. As Dayen and others have pointed out, Mulvaney's CFPB has been announcing more enforcement cases than it did in his first six months. That's […]
Senator Elizabeth Warren answers policy questions about the economy, free markets, and regulation for the Washington Post, here.
by Jeff Sovern We just posted to SSRN the draft of our article, Validation and Verification Vignettes: More Results from an Empirical Study of Consumer Understanding of Debt Collection Validation Notices, Forthcoming in the Rutgers U. L. Rev. (with Kate Walton & Nathan Frishberg). Comments welcome! Here's the abstract: The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act obliges debt […]
So Bloomberg reports (no link available). Kraninger has until July 31 to answer any questions senators submitted after the hearing, so if any such questions were submitted, and she takes the full time allotted, that won't leave much time to digest her answers. The Senate is expected to take a recess during the week of […]
The Department of Education today proposed a new Borrower Defense Rule that would abandon important protections designed to stop for-profit colleges from forcing students to give up their right to take schools to court for wrongdoing by forcing them to arbitrate any claims. Forced arbitration provisions, together with bans on the right of students to […]
by Jeff Sovern So reports Nancy Cook, in Politico. The adviser is not identified. Excerpt: Mulvaney also has received accolades for his slow dismantling of the former CFPB, a brainchild of Elizabeth Warren’s that was created by Democrats in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and has long been a favorite target for Republicans. […]
Jonathan Weinberg of Wayne State has written 'Know Everything that Can Be Known About Everybody': The Birth of the Credit Report, Villanova Law Review, Forthcoming. Here is the abstract: A remarkable amount of our personal information is in the hands of corporations such as the Experian credit bureau; strangers to us, they make their money by collecting our […]