While you’ve been pretending to read the fine print on everything from your cell phone contract to your Starbucks card, companies have been slipping in legalese that robs you of your rights. A little-understood but rapidly expanding practice called “mandatory arbitration” is replacing your right to sue a company in court — a right many …
financial reform
‘No Runaround’ Mortgage Rules Proposed by CFPB
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking aim at the mortgage industry again, this time focusing on making mortgage servicers provide customers with better and more transparent information about their home loans. The CFPB is unveiling a series of proposed rules for the industry, which it will formalize this summer and implement …
FTC Thinks Your Privacy’s Under Attack, Too
This week, the Federal Trade Commission weighed in on the topic of consumer privacy with a new report that essentially says individuals need more protection than the rules and guidelines in place today provide. “The traditional distinction between personally identifiable information and ‘anonymous’ data has blurred,” the agency says in …
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7 Ways of Seeing Goldman Sachs
The business press descended upon Greg Smith’s New York Times Op/Ed with a predictable alacrity. Since the financial crisis, the nation has been embroiled in a debate about our financial system, and Greg Smith is that debate …
Why China Faces a Catch-22 on Financial Reform
Amid all of the aggressive market reform that has taken place in China over the past 30 years, the country’s financial and capital markets are a glaring exception. Capital controls restrict flows of money in and out of the …
Ticked Off at Your Bank? Finally, a Sympathetic Ear
As of March 1, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has opened a complaints department to collect all sorts of consumer gripes about their deposit accounts — checking, savings, CDs and what the agency terms “related services.”
Occupy the SEC: Moving From the Campsite to the Weeds of Regulatory Reform
The surest way to rankle a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement is to repeat the common claim that the movement has no defined goals, a criticism that has dogged the group since its inception. But last week an offshoot of …
CFPB Focuses on Debt Collection, Credit Reporting Companies
A big part of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s potential to help consumers is its ability to supervise nonbank participants in the financial industry. This far-ranging swath of companies includes some that have been the subject of consumer complaints in the past, such as debt collectors and credit reporting agencies. Today, the …
Paul Volcker Defends Eponymous Rule
Though the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform act was passed way back 2010, much of the law remains to be implemented. One reason for the lag between passage of laws and their implementation is that when federal agencies propose new …
Another Swipe-Fee Battle Looms — This Time Over Credit Cards
Most Americans began 2011 having never heard the phrase “debit interchange fee.” But by year’s end, a few more of us were aware that it refers to the money paid by retail merchants to card-issuing banks when we use our debit cards to make purchases. These fees turned out to be an important battleground in the broader bank fee wars that …
A Long To-Do List Awaits the CFPB and Its New Director
Now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a director (albeit one whose appointment could be challenged in court), it has quite the to-do list. At the top, according to newly installed bureau head Richard Cordray, is …
Can Income Based Repayment on Student Loans Save the Economy?
Virtually everyone in this country agrees that an uptick in new business creation is essential to solving our deep economic and employment problems. Unfortunately, there’s a huge obstacle standing in the way: U.S. graduates owe …
