The consumer advocacy community often favors regulations aimed at protecting consumer and worker health and safety and establishing employment rights. Business interests–and the politicians that support those interests–are constantly telling us that regulations–all regulations–are "job killers." But where's the evidence? A conference held yesterday and today at Penn Law School addresses the question of the […]
This article by Marc Lifsher explains: By more than a 2-to-1 margin, California voters favor an initiative to require food manufacturers and retailers to label fresh produce and processed foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients. With less than six weeks until election day, Proposition 37 is supported by 61% of registered voters and opposed by […]
This AP story explains that that 22.4 million [U.S.] households, or 19 percent, had college debt in 2010. That is double the share in 1989, and up from 15 percent in 2007, just prior to the recession — representing the biggest three-year increase in student debt in more than two decades. … that 22.4 million […]
FHFA, the bizarre federal agency running our nationalized mortgage funders Fannie and Freddie, announced a proposal last week that would surcharge mortgages in five states – New York, New Jersey, Florida, Illinois and Connecticut, with a 30 basis point (0.3%) fee. The ostensible reason? It claims Fannie and Freddie lose money in those states due […]
On Monday, Allison posted about the 9th Circuit's grant of rehearing en banc in Kilgore v. Key Bank. The question is whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts a California-law rule that says that claims for a so-called "public injunction" cannot be forced into arbitration (even if an arbitration agreement's terms puts those claims there). The […]
Today's Blog of the Legal Times has this interesting post about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's use of investigatory demands on potential enforcement targets in the financial services industry.
As explained in this LA Times story, "[m]ore than 3.5 million Discover credit card customers will share $200 million in refunds in the wake of a federal investigation [by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the FDIC] that determined the bank tricked people into signing up for payment protection plans and other add-on services." The […]
Adi Osovsky, a Harvard SJD candidate, has written The Misconception of the Consumer as a Homo Economicus: A Behavioral Economic Approach to Consumer Protection in the Credit Reporting System, forthcoming in the Suffolk University Law Review. Here's the abstract: The significant increase in the number of consumer transactions, along with the expansion of information technology, […]
In July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Kilgore v. Key Bank that, in light of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, California law holding that claims for public injunctive relief are not subject to mandatory arbitration is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. The court held that the California rule does not survive Concepcion […]
In this Wall St. Journal op-ed, Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) says that the Consumer Financial Services Bureau is not transparent about how it plans to spend its money. He also says that the CFPB pays its employees too much money: A review of the bureau's salaries as of Aug. 28, 2012, reveals that approximately 60% […]