Looking Back on David Vladeck’s Soon-to-be-Completed Tenure at the FTC

Next month, David Vladeck will a leave the helm of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection–by all accounts reinvograted under his dynamic leadership–to go back to Georgetown Law. Jeff Gelles, the Philadelphia Inquirer's consumer columnist, attempts to sum up David's tenure in a piece entitled "Consumer chief leaves FTC a feistier place." A snippet: Speaking […]

Times Magazine Asks Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?

by Jeff Sovern Here.  The piece is by GW's Jeffrey Rosen and explores how online marketers gather and use information about consumers.  Rosen describes how he visited different web sites using two different browsers, as a result of which one online marketer, BlueKai, created two inconsistent personae for him.  BlueKai, incidentally, allows consumers to see […]

Solove Paper on Privacy Self-Management vs. Paternalism

Daniel J. Solove of GW has written Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Paradox, 126 Harvard Law Review (2013).  Here's the abstract: The current regulatory approach for protecting privacy involves what I refer to as the “privacy self-management model” – the law provides people with a set of rights to enable them to decide for themselves […]

Crushing Student Loan Delinquency

We've covered the issue of the nation's huge student loan debt many times before. Many people are way behind on their payments and nearly all of the loans are made by or guaranteed by the federal government. This Wall Street Journal article explains the current situation. Here's an excerpt that describes differences between student loan debt […]

Comments Sought on Revisions to NY UCC

A UCC omnibus bill being introduced in the New York Legislature would revise UCC Articles 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9, to embody the latest UCC Model Versions.  If you have views about particular advantages and disadvantages to adoption, or suggested revisions, Norman Silber would be interested in knowing about them.  Please email him at Norman.Silber@Hofstra.edu

More Evidence that Consumers Don’t Use TILA Forms to Comparison Shop for Mortgages

by Jeff Sovern A new Fannie Mae survey reports that nearly half of lower-income respondents and more than a third of higher-income respondents obtain quotes from only one mortgage lender.  The survey also confirms findings in other reports that "a substantial portion of all consumers do not understand key mortgage elements." In particular, 41% of borrowers were […]

Mortgage tax break up for debate in fiscal cliff talks

In the fiscal cliff negotiations, a lot is on the table. One policy formally viewed as untouchable but now up for discussion, the Washington Post reports, is the mortgage-interest deduction, which is designed to encourage home ownership but has been criticized as responsible for inflating home prices and benefiting the wealthy disproportionally. The Post story […]

United Airlines Sues Website Critical of United Airlines

by Brian Wolfman One of the nice things about the Internet is that it brings down the cost of communicating with the public, potentially democratizing free speech. At fairly low cost, consumers can establish websites that criticize big businesses. Sometimes those big businesses don't like that and sue the owners of the critical websites. Often […]

EPA Bans BP From Future Federal Contracts

As explained here, the Environmental Protection Agency has banned BP from future federal contracts in light of the company's "lack of business integrity" evidenced by its misconduct surrounding the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The ban is temporary and will be lifted when BP, according to the EPA, "can provide sufficient evidence […]