House Passes Bill to Require OMB to Review Some CFPB Regs Before Issuance

by Jeff Sovern As an independent agency, the CFPB can issue regulations without approval from the Office of Management and Budget.  But the House has now passed a bill that would require OMB to review major regulations promulgated by independent agencies, including the CFPB and the FTC (though the FTC seldom produces regulations, a topic […]

Eric Goldman Article on the Consumer Review Fairness Act

Eric Goldman of Santa Clara has written Understanding the Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016, Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract Consumer reviews are vitally important to our modern economy. Markets become stronger and more efficient when consumers share their marketplace experiences and guide other consumers toward the best vendors and […]

Colin Marks Study of the Prevalence of Disclaimers in Online Sales

Colin P. Marks of St. Mary's has written Online and As Is.  Here is the abstract: Online retail is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. Consumers enjoy the ease with which they can browse, click, and order goods from the comfort of their own homes. Though it may come as no surprise to most […]

Bloomberg: Dismantling Dodd-Frank May Have to Wait

Here.  Excerpt: Hensarling does already have a bill in the House, the Financial Choice Act, that’s being given long odds. “We think the chances that the bill becomes law are less than 20 percent—maybe as low as 10 percent,” Brian Gardner, Washington analyst at the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, wrote to clients on […]

FTC releases annual summary of consumer complaints

Imposter scam complaints surpassed identity theft for the first time as the second most common category of consumer complaints received by the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network in 2016, according to the agency’s new Data Book. Although debt collection complaints declined slightly between 2015 and 2016, they remained the top consumer complaint category, comprising […]

CFPB report on credit reporting problems

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released a report detailing the problems in the credit reporting industry that the CFPB uncovered and corrected through its oversight work. The report identifies significant issues with the quality of the credit information being provided by furnishers and maintained by credit reporting companies, and it outlines the actions that […]