The Supreme Court's 2012 rejection of a challenge to Obamacare had a downside for the law: because the Court deemed the law's expansion of Medicaid to additional low-income individuals "coercive" to the states (even though, as Justice Ginsburg pointed out in her dissent on that holding, the government would pick up most to all of the […]
From the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's press release: Discover’s Illegal Servicing Practices Affected Private Student Loan Borrowers Transferred from Citibank Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against Discover Bank and its affiliates for illegal private student loan servicing practices. The CFPB found that Discover overstated the minimum amounts due on billing statements […]
… is the thesis of an article in Slate yesterday, which points out that about a quarter of Americans think differences in the amount of work people do is responsible for income inequality (according to a Pew study) and that on average, an American working a full time job reports that s/he works 47 hours per week […]
by Paul Alan Levy I blogged last week about a troubling trademark-law decision from the Ninth Circuit; this week Amazon filed a petition for rehearing en banc. Spurred by the concerns I articulated last week, we are preparing an amicus brief in support of the petition, and of course I have written to both sides […]
We posted earlier today on the final rule issued today by the Department of Defense to protect service members from predatory lending. See here and here. The final rule is here. The DoD statement is here. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the agencies charged with enforcing the Military Lending Act, issued a supportive […]
Today is an important milestone week for federal consumer protection policy–the fifth anniversary of Dodd-Frank and the fourth anniversary of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Right now, President Obama, speaking at a VFW hall in Pittsburgh, is announcing another important milestone: new protections for servicemembers against the worst abuses by predatory lenders in the form […]
Slate's coverage begins: In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has just ordered Citibank and its subsidiaries to refund about $700 million to roughly 7 million consumers harmed by illegally imposed credit card add-on products and services (such as credit-protection and monitoring). Citibank and its subsidiaries also will pay $35 million in civil penalties to the CFPB. A detailed […]
…is the headline associated with Sunday's NPR story about individuals' requests that Google "erase their digital footprint." NPR interviews Mona Chalabi, one of the number crunchers at fivethirtyeight.com, about this new phenomenon. Since the European Court of Justice ruled last year that Google must respect Europeans' "right to be forgotten," the company has received around […]
Public Citizen is also speaking today about the fifth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act: On the fifth anniversary of the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, key provisions of the law still have not been implemented or are inadequately enforced, a new Public Citizen report (PDF) shows. The report, “Dodd […]