Many of our readers have no doubt heard news reports of Trump's recent interview with The Economist. If you read this blog, you are probably interested in consumer policy, and, in turn, may be interested in economic policy. If so, read the interview. The interview goes beyond the Trump lies (or gross ignorance) that you've been reading […]
In October 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule requiring greater disclosures for and imposing overdraft limits on prepaid cards, which are frequently used in place of paychecks by people without bank accounts. The timing made the rule eligible for Congress to repeal it under the Congressional Review Act, but lawmakers only had […]
Public Citizen and 25 other U.S. and international groups concerned with consumer rights and electronic privacy have sent a letter to Facebook asking it to release documents about whether it has collected and analyzed psychological information about its youthful users for marketing purposes. The claim that Facebook had engaged in such analysis and hyped it to […]
Congress could have blocked the rule using the Congressional Review Act, but the deadline for the Senate vote appears to be tomorrow and it looks like the Senate won't get to it, and that even if it did, it might not pass. Bloomberg and American Banker have reports. Here's an excerpt from the American Banker story: […]
That's the name of this article by law prof Daniel Hemel. Here's the abstract: Breaking from a decades-old norm of presidential tax transparency, Donald Trump has refused to make his federal income tax returns available for public inspection. Congressional leaders have blocked bipartisan legislation that would compel the President to disclose his returns. New York State, however, […]
The HIll has the story here. Chopra has a strong record of protecting consumers, having been the student loan ombudsman at the CFPB, and is currently at the Consumer Federation of America (we quoted him just last week). The FTC currently has two commissioners in place out of five, one from each major party, and cannot […]
The New York Times reports: The U.S. government's review of a landmark 2010 financial reform law will not be complete by early June as originally targeted, and officials will now report findings piece-by-piece, with priority given to banking regulations, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday. President Donald Trump has pledged to do a […]
Here, in the Times's Economic View column. Excerpt: [T]he Trump administration is taking us in the wrong direction, making student loans riskier, more expensive and more burdensome for borrowers. First, the Education Department has weakened accountability for the companies that administer student loans. Second, it has made it more difficult for borrowers to apply for, […]
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written Self-Regulation and Competition in Privacy Policies, 45 Journal of Legal Studies (2016). Here's the abstract I investigate alternative explanations for the content of privacy policies. Under one model of self-regulation, firms signal their privacy protections to consumers by highlighting compliance with third-party guidelines. However, in a sample of 249 […]
Go here or click on the embedded video below. Not surprisingly, Oliver hates the House bill. And he's worried that the Senate will do little to make things better. Rather, he's concerned that the Senate will just "cut a sh*t sandwich in half" and then Congress and Trump will feed it to the country.