The Wall Street Journal reports that More than at any time in their history, banks are being asked to work hand-in-hand with the U.S. government, serving as deputized watchmen for suspicious activity. That has been happening to some extent since legislation passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but banks’ responsibilities have steadily increased. […]
The Hill reports: The entire federal government is exempt from consumer protection laws that limit unwanted robocalls, the Federal Communications Commission decided in a ruling issued Tuesday night. While the Telephone Consumer Protection Act bars businesses from making numerous autodialed or prerecorded calls to a person’s cellphone—and similar telemarketing calls to a person’s home phone—the […]
Here. He also said that the final arbitration and payday lending rules will come out in the next year or so.
by Julie Murray On Saturday the New York Times had this article about New Jersey’s student loan program, which has an outstanding loan portfolio of about $2 billion. Here’s an excerpt: The loans . . . carry higher interest rates than similar federal programs. Most significant, New Jersey’s loans come with a cudgel that even […]
by Jeff Sovern I'm listening to the audio version of David Dayan's book Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud. A lot of it will be familiar to those who followed media reports of the foreclosure crisis and robo-signing, but having it all pulled together gives it considerable impact, and those who didn't […]
Ari Ezra Waldman of New York Law has written Manipulating Trust on Facebook, 29 Loyola Consumer Law Review. Here is the abstract: Facebook is built on gathering massive amounts of information from its users. To maximize the data it collects, Facebook relies on the trust we have in our friends to encourage us to share […]
by Jeff Sovern The current issue of Consumer Reports cover reads "I kind of ruined my life by going to college." Consumer Reports teamed with RevealNews.org to cover student loans. You can read the RevealNews.org coverage here. Here's the upsetting beginning: A generation ago, Congress privatized a student loan program intended to give more Americans access […]
This National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) just said that some Hondas and Acuras equipped with defective Takata airbags are so dangerous that they shouldn't be driven until they are fixed. As this article explains: Federal regulators on Thursday issued an urgent warning to owners of more than 300,000 Hondas and Acuras, saying they should not drive their […]
by Jeff Sovern In his new book, Federal Trade Commission Privacy Law and Policy, Chris Hoofnagle writes (at page 137) about a 1971 petition by five GW law students to the FTC. The students urged the Commission to bar companies from making unsubstantiated claims and to require that chemically identical products be labeled to indicate […]