by Jeff Sovern The NY Times has an op-ed, Beyond Starbucks: How Racism Shapes Customer Service. Here’s an excerpt: In one experiment, we emailed approximately 6,000 hotels across the United States from 12 fictitious email accounts. We varied the names of the senders to signal different attributes, such as race and gender, to the recipients. […]
by Jeff Sovern As Allison posted earlier, the CFPB has levied a $1 billion fine on Wells. Some first reactions: A person inclined to give acting director Mulvaney the benefit of the doubt might say that this shows that the Bureau is keeping Mr. Mulvaney's promise to enforce consumer financial protection laws vigorously when that […]
AP reporter Ken Sweet explains that Big Banks Saved $3.6B in Taxes Last Quarter Under New (Tax) Law. An excerpt: The nation's six big Wall Street banks posted record, or near record, profits in the first quarter, and they can thank one person in particular: President Donald Trump. While higher interest rates allowed banks to earn […]
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have fined Wells Fargo $1 billion for forcing customers into car insurance and charging mortgage borrowers unfair fees. CNN Money has the story, here.
The Hill has the story here. Looks like the auto guidance will soon be gone.
Register Now for the tenth biennial Teaching Consumer Law Conference "Teaching Consumer Law–Where We've Been–Where We're Going." It will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 18-19th. The Conference is designed for those teaching consumer law, those interested in teaching consumer law full-time or as an adjunct, and anyone interested in discussing the current […]
Following up on Jeff's post yesterday, read Nikitra Bailey's piece in the American Banker entitled Scrapping CFPR auto lending rule would only lead to more discrimination. Here's an excerpt: A group of senators is working to make it easier for automobile dealers to discriminate against consumers of color, setting them up to pay unfair additional fees on their loans. […]
The Senate voted, 50-47, to debate whether to use the Congressional Review Act to rescind the CFPB Indirect Auto Guidance. As it is unlikely that a senator would vote both to debate the issue and retain the Guidance, that almost certainly means the Senate will vote to block the Guidance when it votes, probably tomorrow, on […]
Law360 has the story here. The other current FTC Commissioner, Maureen K. Ohlhausen, has been nominated to the bench and so will also leave soon. The Senate is to vote on four nominees–Joseph J. Simons, Rohit Chopra, Christine S. Wilson and Noah Joshua Phillips–on April 28th; the confirmation vote for a fifth nominee, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, has […]
Some of the people who read this blog — both lawyers and injured patients — must respond to preemption defenses in their medical-product litigation. You may want to read Catherine Sharkey's Field Preemption: Opening the 'Gates of Escape' from Tort Law. Here is the abstract: Richard Epstein remains a (lone) staunch defender of field preemption of […]