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 […]
There's been a lot of publicity about the recalled defective Takata air bags, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been encouraging consumers to get their air bags fixed. (Under the law, recall repairs are free.) According to NHTSA, 8,867,284 Takata air bags have been fixed. That's a lot of air bags. And it's […]
Why? Because the Nobel laureates believe that GMOs can advance human health and nutrition, and, they say, there's no evidence that GMOs hurt people. Read this article on the development by Joel Achenbach. Here are excerpts: More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organismss. The letter asks Greenpeace to […]
Stephen J. Ware of Kansas has written The Politics of Arbitration Law and Centrist Proposals for Reform, 53 Harvard Journal on Legislation (2016). Here is the abstract: Arbitration law in the United States is far more controversial when applied to individuals than to businesses. While enforcement of arbitration agreements between businesses sometimes raises legal issues that […]
SCOTUSBLOG coverage here and here. Reuters reports here. The Reuters lead reads: "The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether Miami can pursue lawsuits accusing major banks of predatory mortgage lending to black and Hispanic home buyers resulting in loan defaults that drove down city tax revenues and property values." HousingWire has more […]
The Washington Post has two articles today about payday loans. First, an opinion piece by Mike Calhoun, the director of the Center for Responsible Lending, is entitled "Think there’s no good alternative to payday loans? Think again." Mr. Calhoun begins: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed rule requiring payday and car title lenders to assess […]