This NY Times article by Stacy Cowley and Emily Flitter explains that A federal regulator on Wednesday encouraged banks to offer small, short-term loans to people in need of emergency cash, the Trump administration’s latest relaxation of banking regulations and a rare moment of common ground with consumer groups that oppose payday lending. The Office of […]
A strong editorial from the New York Times today about the failure of the Department of Education to protect students from predatory colleges and the House of Representative's bill to make the situation worse, here.
by Jeff Sovern When the Bureau fined Wells Fargo $1 billion, it did so using its power to prohibit unfair practices in 12 USC 5531(c), 5536(a)(1)(B). (see pages 9 and 12 of the consent order). House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling's Financial Choice Act, passed by the House, would eliminate that power. But don't […]
by Jeff Sovern At the Teaching Consumer Law conference, on Friday, I asked questions of those who have taught consumer law recently or intend to teach it in the near future. The questions, in a somewhat different form because of the limits of the survey software, were drawn from the survey that appears below the […]
by Jeff Sovern Last Thursday, I posted on the blog Republican FTC Commissioners Name Payday Lender Lawyer to Run Consumer Protection Bureau Over Dem Commissioners' Objections. Alan Kaplinsky posted in response A reply to Professor Sovern, in which he wrote that "Jeff’s characterization of Andrew as a “Payday Lender Lawyer” in the title of his blog post […]
Read Steven Lane's piece in The Hill entitled Trump signs repeal of auto-loan policy that targeted racial bias. Acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney is pleased. In a press release issued today, Mulvaney "thanks the President and the Congress" for nixing the CFPB's policy because the agency had acted "outside of federal statutes." "As an executive agency," Mulvaney says, "we […]
In a 5-4 opinion this morning, the Supreme Court continued its string of pro-arbitration decisions. In Epic Systems v. Lewis, the Court held that arbitration agreements that ban collective proceedings do not violate the federal labor laws’ protection of concerted worker action. Instead, the Court held, the Federal Arbitration Act requires enforcement of those bans […]
Rory Van Loo of BU has written Regulatory Police, forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review. Here is the abstract: The front line for business regulation — Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) engineers, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) examiners, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors, among others — guard against toxic air, financial ruin, and deadly explosions. Like police officers […]
Brian Feinstein of Penn's Wharton School has written Judging Judicial Foreclosure, 15 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 406 (2018). Here is the abstract: For the third time in the last several decades, policymakers are contemplating an overhaul of mortgage‐finance regulations. Despite the considerable attention paid to how ex ante regulations affect the availability of credit and the appropriateness […]
David L. Noll of Rutgers has written Public Litigation, Private Arbitration? 18 Nev. L.J. 477 (2018). Here is the abstract: How should legal disputes be allocated between litigation and arbitration? Given strong incentives for many actors to arbitrate everything, the question turns fundamentally on the scope of arbitration under the applicable law. In "Re-Inventing Arbitration: How Expanding the […]