How Bad is Unemployment? How Long Will Unemployment Rates Remain High?

I remember when "full employment" was considered achieved when unemployment did not exceed 4 or 4.5%. Now, it seems that people think of full employment as unemployment of 6 or 6.5%. The Hamilton Project has released a report on how long it will take to get to 6.5% unemployment, assuming various rates of job growth. […]

House GOP Committee Attacks CFPB Head Cordray for Attending State of the Union Address

by Jeff Sovern I kid you not. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Darrell Issa, and its Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs, chaired by longtime CFPB foe Patrick McHenry, has issued a report titled THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU’S THREAT TO CREDIT ACCESS IN THE UNITED STATES.  Here […]

David Vladeck Leaves Position as Head of FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection

Here is the FTC's press release, which praises Vladeck's record of achievement as the agency's top consumer enforcer. Vladeck was in the position for the Obama Administration's first term and is returning to Georgetown Law School. The press release also announces Vladeck's successor, Charles Harwood, who will serve in an "acting" capacity. Pat Bak will […]

Libor: a new penalty, against a backdrop of business as usual

Revelations that banks manipulated the benchmark Libor rate sent shockwaves across the financial world this summer. (Libor, despite sounding like a Tolkien villian — "People of Middle Earth! We must unite in defense of the realm against the forces of Mordor and Libor!" — stands for "London interbank offered rate" and forms the basis for […]

Study: Generic Drug Label Warnings Are Often Different From the Brand-Name Labels on Which They Are (Supposedly) Based

by Brian Wolfman Indiana University medical school professor Jon Duke and two co-authors have published this study entitled "Consistency in the safety labeling of bioequivalent drugs." The study could have been entitled "Inconsistency in the safety labeling of bioequivalent drugs" because it finds that the warnings on generic drug labels often deviate from the brand-name […]

Intervention by Non-Class-Member Objectors

In Devlin v. Scardelletti, the Supreme Court held that a class member who objects in a federal district court to a proposed class-action settlement may appeal approval of that settlement without moving for (and being granted) intervention. As I explained in this article, despite efforts by settling parties to limit Devlin to members of non-opt-out classes, […]

Calo’s Against Notice Skepticism

by Jeff Sovern I've moved on to the privacy chapter of our casebook, and in that regard I just finished reading M. Ryan Calo's (Calo is at the University of Washington and affilated with Stanford)  intriguing Against Notice Skepticism In Privacy (And Elsewhere), 87 Notre Dame Law Review 1027 (2012).  Before I add my two […]