by Jeff Sovern Here. The idea is that a company can apply to the Bureau for permission to try different disclosures and the disclosures can then be evaluated, and perhaps adopted. In its statement announcing the proposal, the Bureau says: When deciding whether or not to grant a company a waiver from current disclosure requirements, the […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. Two points from the Executive Summary, though there's quite a bit more than this: The NCRAs have created an automated system for handling consumer disputes and forwarding them to data furnishers. Through this automated system – called e-OSCAR – the NCRAs provide furnishers with one or two numeric codes indicating the […]
Last week, we posted about the Caronia decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and David Lazarus's critique of the decision in the LA Times. Recall that, in Caronia, the court threw out a misdemeanor conviction of a drug company prescription drug rep on First Amendment grounds. The Times has now […]
We've blogged previously about Public Citizen's fight for consumers and against court secrecy in the "Company Doe" case. As you'll recall, this is a case that was litigated before the district court in secret, with secret facts, secret proceedings and a secret plaintiff. A company sued the Consumer Product Safety Commission to keep a complaint […]
Kathleen C. Engel of Suffolk Patricia A. McCoy of Connecticut have written Federal Preemption and Consumer Financial Protection: Past and Future, 3 Banking & Financial Services Policy Report 25 (2012). Here is the abstract: Many states and cities filled the void by passing anti-predatory lending laws of their own. Lenders, worried about potential liability, quickly organized a […]
The Senate unanimously passed bills, previously passed by the House, pertaining to the confidentiality of information banks provide to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the stickers on ATM terminals about fees. Bloomberg has the story here. The president is expected to sign the bills.
by Brian Wolfman David Lazarus has written this piece on airline fees, which he doesn't like. He sets out the airlines' position — that some travelers don't want the add-ons, and shouldn't have to pay for them — and then rejects it, saying that some things are so basic to the air flight (for instance, […]
We posted yesterday on how the law should deal with consumer scams directed at older people in light of evidence that older people are more susceptible to deception. After the post, Ted Mermin, consumer-law expert and head of the Public Good Law Center, pointed out that some states' consumer protection statutes authorize greater penalties against […]
Here (login required). An excerpt: Likewise, there was initially deep skepticism inside the banking industry about the CFPB's arbitration study, and there is still a belief among industry insiders that the agency's research is likely to lead to new regulations. * * * But over the last few months, industry observers have been relatively pleasedwith they […]
According to this article by Elizabeth Norton, the Federal Trade Commission says that up to 80% of the victims of consumer scams are elderly. Why? Older people tend to look at things in a positive light: One explanation may lie in a brain region that serves as a crook detector. Called the anterior insula, this […]