by Jeff Sovern Here. Biden's Briefing is a podcast which plays "[w]hat Joe wants you to know. Every day, Vice President Joe Biden looks to the news across the nation that's sparking conversation, sharing the articles and opinions that he's reading and might be of interest to you." For today's episode, he chose the essay […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued a bulletin warning companies about tricking consumers into expensive pay-by-phone fees. The CFPB is concerned about companies potentially misleading consumers about the purpose and amount of certain pay-by-phone fees or keeping them in the dark about much cheaper payment options. The bulletin also reviews guidelines to help consumer […]
by Jeff Sovern Law360's Evan Weinberger has the story here. The rule still could be blocked by Congress under the Congressional Review Act or in the courts. One down, two to go.
by Jeff Sovern Republican pollster Robert Carpenter has written Republicans beware: Your voters like tough rules on Wall Street in the Washington Examiner. Excerpt: Republicans do the bidding of Wall Street at their own peril. That is the message of a new poll that I helped conduct around financial reform and consumer protection last month […]
Here. The first three paragraphs read: The early results from a recent study that Kent Grayson, a Northwestern University marketing professor, did on consumer skepticism left him feeling a little, well, skeptical. So he ran the trials a few more times. Each time, when participants were asked what they thought of modern advertising techniques, they […]
Former Trump campaign head Corey Lewandowski went on Meet the Press today. The host of the show, Chuck Todd, was questioning Lewandowski on the same things everyone else on the Sunday shows had been talking about: the failure of the republican controlled Congress to repeal the ACA, chaos and personnel turnover in the White House, the […]
Gregory Klass of Georgetown critiques the draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts treatment of privacy policies in The Quantitative Study of Privacy-Policy Decisions in the Draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts. Here is the abstract: The draft Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts includes six quantitative studies of judicial decisions, each used to support a rule […]
A coalition of 20 Attorneys General sent a letter today urging U.S. Senate leaders not to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Arbitration Rule, which stops companies from forcing consumers to sign away their legal rights. The press release of the Massachusetts Attorney General explains: The House recently passed a Joint Resolution of Disapproval that […]
Josh Lauer has written Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America. Here's the publisher's description: The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing […]
Then take a look at this story from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity: Who is killing the CFPB’s arbitration rule? Excerpt: The financial industry’s hefty investment in the campaigns of House members appeared to pay off this week when that chamber voted to kill a new rule that allows consumers to file class-action lawsuits […]