The Washington Post reports that Volkswagen has agreed to pay $10.2 billion to settle a lawsuit brought against it for cheating on U.S. emissions tests. The case stems from the carmaker’s 2015 admission that 11 million vehicles worldwide had cheating software designed to get around emissions tests. The settlement will compensate owners of 482,000 vehicles […]
NPR reports: Just a week before a Vermont law kicks in requiring labels on food containing genetically modified ingredients, U.S. Senate agriculture leaders announced a deal Thursday that takes the power out of states' hands — and sets a mandatory national system for GM disclosures on food products. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, the chairman of […]
Jane R. Bambauer, Jonathan D. Loe, and D. Alex Winkelman, all of Arizona have written A Bad Education, 2016 University of Illinois Law Review ___ (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract: Mandated disclosure laws achieve their regulatory goals by educating the public about latent attributes of a product or service. At their best, they improve the accuracy of […]
by Jeff Sovern Hensarling calls the bill the Financial Choice Act. Make America Great for Banks Act is closer to the truth. Based on a quick look, the bill would give bank lobbyists power over the CFPB by subjecting it to the appropriations process, increase the likelihood of deadlocks by turning the Bureau into a commission, […]
InsideArm.com reports that it "has learned from multiple industry sources" that the CFPB will hold a Small Business Regulatory Fairness Enforcement Act (SBREFA) proceeding the week of August 22 in connection with the Bureau's forthcoming debt collection regulations. The Bureau has to convene the SBREFA proceeding before proposing the new rules. Just to give a sense […]
The Wall Street Journal reports: Small businesses have been a growing source of revenue for online lenders. Now, federal regulators are exploring whether they should intensify oversight of these loan deals. “These are basically mom-and-pop operations getting, you know, very small loans,” John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, told The […]
A new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau supervision report finds that some mortgage servicers continue to use failed technology that has already harmed consumers, putting those companies in violation of the CFPB’s new servicing rules. In its examinations covering numerous mortgage servicers since the new CFPB rules took effect in January 2014, CFPB examiners have found […]
Reuter's reports: Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit will pay $415 million and admit to wrongdoing to settle charges that it misused customer cash to generate profits and failed to safeguard their securities from creditors, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday. An SEC investigation found that Merrill Lynch violated the SEC’s […]
The New York Times has this column.
Singapore-based mobile advertising company InMobi will pay $950,000 in civil penalties and implement a comprehensive privacy program to settle Federal Trade Commission charges it deceptively tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers – including children – without their knowledge or consent to serve them geo-targeted advertising. The FTC alleges that InMobi mispresented that […]