Mark Totten of Michigan State has written Credit Reform and the States: The Vital Role of Attorneys General after Dodd-Frank. Here's the abstract: Congress employed multiple strategies in the wake of the Great Recession to provide greater protections for consumers in the financial marketplace. One strategy aimed at agency design and resulted in creation of […]
For those of you following the controversy over President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB and the CFPB, Matthew Stephenson has an interesting essay in the current issue of the Yale Law Journal. Here's the abstract: It is generally assumed that the Constitution requires the Senate to vote to confirm the President’s nominees to principal […]
In letters to President Obama and the congressional leadership, a coalition of consumer advocacy groups — such as the Consumer Federation of America, the National Consumer Law Center, Consumers Union, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG — have called for the implementation of a consumer-protection agenda during the President's second term. The agenda is quite detailed and […]
Here. Of those, 250 were made by Republican presidents. Some of the supposedly unlawful appointments were of Court of Appeals judges. (HT: Barbara Traub)
Latanya Sweeney, Professor of Government and Technology in Residence at Harvard University, has written Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery. Here's the abstract: A Google search for a person's name, such as “Trevon Jones”, may yield a personalized ad for public records about Trevon that may be neutral, such as “Looking for Trevon Jones? …”, or […]
Sumit Agarwal of the National University of Singapore and Douglas D. Evanoff of the Chicago Fed have written Loan Product Steering in Mortgage Market. Here's the abstract: Accusations of unscrupulous lender behavior — e.g., predatory lending — abounded during the housing boom of the 2000s. Such behavior is said to have generated significant social costs […]
See here for this new report on banking shenanigans. Here's the gist: When an outside analysis uncovered serious flaws with thousands of home loans, JPMorgan Chase executives found an easy fix. Rather than disclosing the full extent of problems like fraudulent home appraisals and overextended borrowers, the bank adjusted the critical reviews, according to documents […]
by Brian Wolfman It's nice to see the FTC shutting down unscrupulous, outrageous debt collectors. In this complaint filed last month, the FTC charged a debt collection company called Goldman Schwartz and related defendants with a variety of violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act. As explained in […]
On Monday, we told you about one company's efforts to bring its challenge to President Obama's recess appointments before the U.S. Supreme Court. The challenge came in the form of an emergency stay application directed to Justice Ginsburg, which she wasted no time in denying. The challenger — a company, known as HealthBridge Management, that […]
by Brian Wolfman California legislators are considering requiring used car sellers to fix cars subject to government safety recalls before they re-sell those cars to unsuspecting customers. The idea is that consumers should not be buying used cars that the government says have bad brakes or faulty, fire-prone wiring. Legislation on the topic could affect […]