by Brian Wolfman This article by the Consumerist's Chris Morran explains that, in her first Senate Banking Committee hearing, senior Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren "grilled a panel of regulators on their tendency to settle with law-breaking banks rather than go to trial. … Sen. Warren explained her stance that if banks reap billions of profits […]
In light of the steady march toward maximum judicial enforcement of arbitration clauses, perhaps nothing should surprise us anymore, but a recent federal district court decision caught the eyes of several of us here at CL&P Blog. This decision, from the Southern District of Ohio, ruled that a dispute was subject to arbitration even though […]
Here's the email they sent out: Good afternoon, We need your help to figure out what’s the deal with financial products marketed to students, like debit cards and checking accounts. Email us at CFPB_StudentsFedReg@cfpb.gov by March 18 to tell us about any aspect of your experience. That may include: Signing up for the card or account […]
Carolyn Dessin of Akron has written Arbitrability and Vulnerability, 21 Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 349 (2012). Here's the abstract: Arbitration is cool. Everybody's doing it. In the eighty-five years since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment. Recent decades have seen the meteoric rise of […]
Remember the Big Spring suit? That's the case challenging various provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall St. reform law, including the legality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, on separation-of-powers grounds. That suit includes, but is by no means limited to, a challenge to Richard Cordray's appointment as CFPB director as an impermissible (non-)recess appointment. The […]
That's the name of this report from the Institute of Medicine (eds. Lawrence Gostin and Gillian Buckley). The Food and Drug Administration and similar regulatory agencies around the world seek to protect consumers by approving drugs only if they are reasonably safe and effective for their intended uses. But that objective is undermined when bad […]
by Jeff Sovern You can read Senator Rubio's speech here. Here's the key language: "a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies." He doesn't specify the policies, but he's probably referring to the old, thoroughly debunked, claim that the CRA caused the subprime crisis, something the Republican presidential […]
Victimized by Credit Reports. An excerpt: Given the evidence, it is imperative that the federal government do more to make the credit-reporting process transparent and to protect consumers from errors that can drive up their borrowing costs and cause them to be denied jobs or be turned away by landlords. * * * * * […]
In a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Massachusetts Secretary William Galvin is asking the SEC to consider a ban on binding pre-dispute arbitration clauses in investor advisor contracts, citing a survey that found them prevalent in contracts between investment advisers and their clients. In the alternative, Galvin asks that the SEC undertake […]