CFPB Directors Now Under President's Thumb

The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Seila Law v. CFPB today, holding by a 5-4 vote that the Congress violated the principle of separation of powers by placing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under a single director removable by the president only for cause. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, with Justice Kagan dissenting on behalf of herself and Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.

By a different majority (the Chief Justice and Justices Alito and Kavanaugh, together with the four dissenters on the separation-of-powers issue), the Court held that the for-cause-removal provision was severable from the remainder of the statutory provisions conferring authority on the CFPB. Thus, the agency may continue its operations going forward, but the president will now have the authority to fire the director at will.

Even so, the Court held that the specific issue giving rise to the case—whether a civil investigative demand must be set aside because it was issued while the tenure-protection provision was in place—requires a remand for the lower courts to determine whether the agency’s current leadership has validly “ratified” it. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch disagreed with the majority’s severability analysis and would have held that the civil investigative demand could not be enforced, period.

Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion was issued the same day he joined the Court’s more liberal judges in holding that adherence to precedent required the Court to strike down a Louisiana abortion restriction that was identical to a Texas law the Court held unconstitutional four years ago, before Justice Kennedy’s retirement from the Court and his replacement by Justice Kavanaugh. The Chief Justice disagreed with the earlier ruling in the Texas case but today ruled that the principle of treating “like cases alike” required him to vote to strike down the Louisiana law.

In Seila Law, Chief Justice Roberts also had a lot to say about precedents, but his effort was devoted to devising grounds to distinguish them rather than follow them. He reasoned that because prior precedents upholding limits on presidential removal power did not specifically address the constitutionality of an agency headed by a single, tenure-protected principal officer (as opposed to an agency headed by a tenure-protected multi-member commission, or an office headed by a single, tenure-protected “inferior” officer), those precedents did not “resolve[] whether the CFPB Director’s insulation from removal is constitutional.”

Instead, he found direction in long-discredited dicta in an older case, Myers v. United States, which he read to adopt the broad rule that the president must have power to remove executive officers at will. The Court’s later opinions, in Roberts’s revisionist reading, created only two narrow exceptions to this rule for agencies headed by multi-member commissions and for inferior officers. Although the Chief Justice declined to “revisit” those precedents, at least not “today,” he also declined to extend them.

Justice Kagan’s dissent, by contrast, offered a completely different reading of the Court’s precedents. In her view, the Court’s past opinions do not establish a “‘general rule’ of ‘unrestricted removal power’ with two grudgingly applied ‘exceptions.’” Instead, they “give Congress wide leeway to limit the President’s removal power in the interest of enhancing independence from politics in regulatory bodies like the CFPB.”

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, on the other hand, would have done what Chief Justice Roberts was unwilling to do “today,” and would have overruled the precedents allowing “exceptions” to the principle of unfettered presidential removal power.

As far as the CFPB is concerned, one thing is settled, at least for now: The president can now remove the CFPB’s director for any reason, or no reason. That result, in the long term, is not a good one for an agency that requires the independence to stand up to powerful financial forces in the interest of consumers. Repeatedly over the last four years we have seen how officials who can be fired without cause by the president—such as the Attorney General—abandon principle and the rule of law when they get in the way of the president’s own interests, or those he favors.

In the medium term, however, the first CFPB director likely to be fired without cause may be the one installed by President Trump, Kathy Kraninger—if the president is not reelected. Consumer advocates may cheer that result. But even if that happens, it will not be the only fallout from today’s opinion.

To begin with, the remand to determine whether the civil investigative demand in the Seila Law case must be enforced is likely to be the first of many cases in which parties argue over whether today’s opinion requires some action taken by the agency to be set aside. Such litigation is likely to become its own cottage industry.

In addition, we have seen in other areas how the approach of limiting precedents to their particular circumstances, treating them as never-to-be-extended “exceptions” to other principles, may eventually lead the Court to treat them as doctrinal orphans ripe for overruling because subsequent developments in the case law have undermined their rationales. Advocates of expanded presidential power, and industries that would perceive a benefit in eliminating independent regulators, are likely to press on for overruling of the Court’s decisions allowing independent multi-member commissions.

Whether they ultimately succeed may depend on how the Court’s composition changes in the next few presidential terms. In the long run, it may be Seila Law that turns out to be the orphan, but surely there will be plenty of litigation in the meantime.

 

A Shot Across the Bow for Copyright Trolls: Forcing Higbee Clients to Pay for Frivolous Demand Letters and Intimidation Tactics

by Paul Alan Levy

As I have discussed in several previous posts, Mathew Higbee has built up a significant copyright enforcement business that depends on the issuance of threatening demand letters that are followed up by a small army of “compliance resolution specialists” who nag and threaten large awards of damages, the issuance of judgment liens, imposing short deadlines before the matter will be “escalated” to “the litigation team.” In self-congratulatory interviews. Mathew Higbee brags about how successful these threats are, and based on a staff recruitment video, it appears that the Higbee staff operates under daily goals that may be as high as $100,000 per day (this image
appears at the 51 second time mark on the video linked above). Because the Higbee interviews reveal that his earnings are split evenly with this clients, the clients, too, have a substantial incentive to engage his services. Some of the claims the Higbee firm pursues are valid ones, although, even then, the firm tends to take advantage of its pro se targets by demanding payments far higher than it is likely to gain in litigation.

Generally speaking, the targets of this demand letter practice don’t know their rights under copyright law, and would likely have to pay so much in lawyer fees just to assess their potential exposure, not to speak of defending themselves in court, that it makes financial sense for them to simply pay what is demanded, to make the problem go away, then to stand up for their rights. I have concluded that the Higbee firm deliberately, and cynically, preys on the high cost of copyright lawyers to extract undeserved payments for itself and its clients. When the tactic is employed to threaten liability on grounds too unreasonable to succeed in litigation, these tactics provide a sound basis for invoking the “considerations of compensation and deterrence”  that support awards of attorney fees in copyright cases.

Dep't of Education ordered to cancel student loans of all former Corinthian Colleges students in MA

"A federal judge has ordered the Department of Education to cancel the student loans of all 7,200 former Corinthian Colleges students in Massachusetts. This is the first time a federal court has ordered a borrower defense discharge of federal student loans.

"The victory in Vara v. DeVos comes nearly two years after the Department of Education was ordered to stop collecting on the borrowers’ loans because they were covered by a borrower defense application that was filed by the Massachusetts Attorney General. The lawsuit demanded that the Department grant the Attorney General’s borrower defense application and cancel the students’ fraudulent loans."

Read the full press release from Harvard's Project on Predatory Student Lending, here.

States use consumer protection laws to fight climate change

The D.C. attorney general sued four of the world’s largest oil and gas companies -- BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell -- Thursday, asserting that they have engaged in a decades-long campaign to deceive District consumers about the effects of fossil fuels on climate change. The lawsuit, based on the DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act and filed in D.C. Superior Court, alleges that the companies have known about the adverse environmental effects of their products since the 1950s. It seeks a court order for the companies to pay civil penalties, provide financial relief for consumers in DC, and stop the allegedly deceptive campaigns.

The Washington Post has the story, here.

Minnesota filed a similar suit two days earlier. Read about it here.

Op-ed concerning the propriety of colleges demanding Covid-19 liability waivers

The Trump campaign infamously demanded a liability waiver from people attending Trump's rally in Tulsa last weekend. Now, law prof Heidi Li Feldman has penned an op-ed for the LA Times entitled Your college may ask you to sign a waiver for harm inflicted by COVID-19. Don’t do it.

How can businesses demand laws preventing liability for negligently infecting consumers with COVID when so many carelessly don't require employees to wear masks?

by Jeff Sovern

Businesses are lobbying to overturn laws that impose liability for negligently infecting customers with the coronavirus, claiming that they fear frivolous law suits and that they will observe heath guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus. But in fact, plenty of businesses are not even requiring employees to wear masks--and that's with laws the impose liability for negligently infecting customers. If businesses are so afraid of being sued for carelessly infecting customers, why aren't they simply being more careful? We can expect businesses to take even fewer precautions if they face no consequences for negligently getting consumers sick. Before businesses ask legislators to protect them from their own misconduct, they should first get their houses in order.

Do restaurants and similar public-facing businesses have a duty to tell consumers when their employees have COVID?

by Jeff Sovern

This article in the Houston Chronicle says that Texas health laws don't require restaurants to tell diners whether employees have COVID, though some restaurants have voluntarily disclosed that employees have been infected. Health laws around the nation should be amended to prevent employees with COVID from knowingly or negligently working at restaurants, if they don't already so provide, and to require disclosures when an employee has tested positive recently. But in the meantime, common law fraud rules may protect diners.  In most states, contracting parties must disclose latent material defects that are unknown to the buyer. Our casebook has a couple of cases on this point, Johnson v. Davis, 480 So.2d 625 (Fl. 1985) and Layman v. Binns, 519 N.E.2d 642 (Oh. 1988). I think that means that if a restaurant doesn't disclose to diners that their server has COVID, the consumers would have a pretty good claim against the restaurant, assuming that the restaurant knew about the condition and that it wasn't obvious.  

AALS Call for Papers for Works-in-Progress Session for Junior Consumer Law Scholars During Jan. 2021 Meeting in SF

We've received the following Call for Papers:

Call for Papers
Junior Consumer Law Scholars WIP session

AALS Section on Commercial & Consumer Law

January 5-9, 2021, AALS Annual Meeting

The AALS Section on Commercial & Consumer Law is pleased to announce a “Works-in-Progress Session for Junior Consumer Law Scholars” program during the 2021 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. This works-in-progress program will bring together junior and senior consumer law scholars for the purpose of providing junior scholars with feedback and guidance on their draft articles.

FORMAT: Scholars whose papers are selected will provide a brief overview of their paper, and participants will then break into simultaneous roundtables dedicated to the individual papers. Two senior scholars will provide commentary and lead the discussion about each paper.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Junior scholars who are interested in participating in the program should send a draft or summary of at least five pages to Professor Christopher Bradley at cgbradley@uky.edu on or before Friday, August 21, 2020. The cover email should state the junior scholar’s institution, tenure status, number of years in their current position, whether the paper has been accepted for publication, and, if not, when the scholar anticipates submitting the article to law reviews. The subject line of the email should read: “Submission—Consumer Law WIP Program.”

Junior scholars whose papers are selected for the program will need to submit a draft to the senior scholar commentators by Friday, December 4, 2020.

ELIGIBILITY: Junior scholars at AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. “Junior scholars” includes untenured faculty who have been teaching full-time at a law school for ten or fewer years. The Committee will give priority to papers that have not yet been accepted for publication.

Pursuant to AALS rules, faculty at fee-paid non-member law schools, foreign faculty, adjunct and visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), graduate students, fellows, and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Please note that all presenters at the program are responsible for paying their own annual meeting registration fees and travel expenses.

 

The Trump Administration’s Attacks on Regulatory Benefits

Read The Trump Administration’s Attacks on Regulatory Benefits by law prof RIchard Revesz. Here's the abstract:

For the last four decades, benefit-cost analysis has been a mainstay of the U.S. federal regulatory process and, under Executive Orders in effect since 1981, such analysis must generally be used to justify significant federal regulations. While administrations of different parties have occasionally differed on the methodologies used to assess costs or benefits, these disagreements operated within the bounds of approaches that are supported by the economic and scientific literatures. In contrast, the Trump administration has been operating outside such bounds. In particular, as I discuss in this article, it has sought to justify important deregulatory measures by focusing on cost savings, but ignoring the resulting foregone benefits; placing substantial roadblocks in the way of regulatory agencies’ ability to rely on epidemiological studies; promoting discredited threshold models, under which significant air pollutants are assumed to have no adverse effects below a certain level; calling co-benefits into question; downplaying climate change damages; and counting transfer payments in inappropriate ways. I argue that these moves significantly threaten the health and safety of Americans.

 

 

The copyrighted demand letter, redux

by Paul Alan Levy

It’s been many years since John Dozier and his associates suffered the humiliation (and subjected their clients to the Streisand Effect) that followed from their habit of appending a threat of copyright infringement litigation to their defamation demand letters, but a newly minted “defamation attorney” from Houston named Paul Sternberg seems determined to follow in their path. The story began when one of his clients, a fellow named Christopher J Nanda, proclaimed on social media that his office window put him in a perfect position to aim his well-oiled automatic rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin. Jana Hall took issue with this post, and used Twitter to call it to the attention of Nanda’s employer, which promptly sacked him.

Sternberg then wrote a letter to both Hall and her husband (referring to his client alternately as “Mr. Nanda” and “Mr. Nance”), warning that he was going to sue both of them, potentially ruining her husband’s business, if she did not take down the tweets, “de-index” the tweets (that is, prevent Google from linking to them, part of the defamation services that his web site promises, circumventing what he claims is protection that web sites enjoy under the Freedom of Information Act), and promise never to speak online about Nanda ever again. When she posted his demand letter on Twitter, both to call him to task for his threats and to crowd-source her quest for advice on how to respond to them, he angrily threatened her by claiming she had infringed his copyright in the letter, demanding that she remove it, as well, from her Twitter feed.

FTC receives thousands of consumer complaints related to the coronavirus

The Federal Trade Commission reports that it has received more than 91,000 coronavirus-related complaints from consumers.

More than half (47,881) are about fraud.

Sad news: longtime consumer law professor Ralph Rohner died

by Jeff Sovern

Ralph was one of the original co-authors of the consumer law casebook I am now privileged to co-author. I met him when we were working on the third edition. He was a genial and gentle man, and absolutely brilliant. He was not only a great teacher of law students, but also a great teacher to law professors. Many of his contributions to the earlier editions of the casebook are still in the current edition, and even the parts he did not write were made better by his suggestions and his instruction about how to write a casebook. It's a blow to the world of consumer law that he is no longer able to participate in it. I will miss him. 

Dee Pridgen, who joined the casebook team before I did and so had more time to work with Ralph, has sent along some comments. Here they are: 

Tribute to Ralph Rohner, 1938-2020.

By Dee Pridgen, Professor Emeritus, University of Wyoming College of Law

Ralph Rohner was a giant in the field of consumer law and I am proud to have been associated with him over the course of my own career as a professor and scholar in the same field.  I first met Ralph a few years after I graduated from law school at New York University, when I was hired at Catholic University law school in the mid-1970’s to teach Legal Writing for a year.  Ralph was on the faculty there at that time, teaching consumer and commercial law.  It was only later, after a stint at the Federal Trade Commission as a staff attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, that I moved on to become a faculty member at the University of Wyoming and began my own academic career in earnest.  At the Wyoming law school, I taught consumer law and started work on a treatise on the same subject.  It was at this point, in the late 1980’s, that Ralph and his coauthor Andy Spanogle, invited me to join them as coauthors for a second edition of their casebook on Consumer Law, which was published in 1991.  This was a transformative experience for me as I had the opportunity to work with these two pioneering scholars.  The book is now in its fifth edition with two other excellent coauthors, Jeff Sovern and Chris Peterson.  During this time, I was also familiar with, and often referred to, Ralph’s own Truth in Lending treatise, as well as his numerous scholarly articles on the subject.  I was also grateful to him for hiring me as a visiting professor at Catholic University in the early nineties, to teach first year Contracts as well as Consumer Law.

What I learned from Ralph was invaluable.  In the course of working with him on several editions of the casebook, I observed how gifted he was in the art of pedagogy.  For instance, his discussion problems for the casebook were so interesting and well-crafted that they would stimulate students to probe the subject matter at hand in depth.  He was also a wonderful colleague to work with on manuscripts, and never failed to make timely and relevant contributions to the ongoing versions of the casebook. He was up to date and relevant with case selections and notes, which form the core of any good casebook.   Ralph was also both an advocate for sound consumer laws, as well as providing a balanced perspective on the subject through his associations with the banking industry.  While I only worked at CU as a visiting professor for a year while Ralph was Dean, it was clear that he was a well-respected leader of the institution.  He was also invariably kind and considerate toward me during my time at CU and during our work together on the casebook.  My only regret is that the year I worked at CU in the 1990’s was the last year in the old dilapidated building prior to the move to the state of the art law school facility that could not have been built without Ralph’s unflagging efforts. 

Ralph was a man of many impressive accomplishments as well as a person of flawless character.  He will be missed.

Consumer advocates Kathleen Engel, NACA, and USPIRG sue the CFPB for violating federal law in establishing the conservative/industry taskforce on consumer financial law

Here's the press release (I'm afraid the formatting wasn't carried forward):

Consumer Advocates Sue CFPB For Granting Financial Services Industry Illegal Influence Over Consumer Protection Policy

Director Kraninger Unlawfully Formed the “Federal Consumer Financial Law Taskforce,” Stacked Group with Industry Representatives

Secretive Taskforce Likely To Recommend Sweeping Rollback of Consumer Protections as Nation Grapples with Recession

National Association of Consumer Advocates, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Professor Kathleen Engel File Suit to Shutter Unlawful Group

Boston, M.A. — Today, representing the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and consumer law expert Professor Kathleen Engel, Democracy Forward sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Director Kathy Kraninger for unlawfully creating and operating the Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The Taskforce is stacked with industry-aligned members, excludes consumer advocates, does not serve a public interest, and has conducted its work behind closed doors — all in violation of federal law. This suit seeks to put a halt to the Taskforce’s unlawful operation and stop the CFPB from relying on its work.

Trump rally liability waiver (without arbitration clause)

As has been widely reported, if you want to register for tickets to attend Trump's June 19 rally in Tulsa, you have to say that you won't hold the Trump campaign and others liable for Covid-19-related injuries. Go here to read the entire order form. The purported waiver reads as follows:

By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury. 

 

Teaching Consumer Law Conference

For the past twenty years, the Center for Consumer Law has held its “Teaching Consumer Law” Conference. The next meeting will be May, 2021, and I think those of us who are teaching, interested in teaching, or just curious about what goes on in the classroom will find we have a lot to talk about. In addition to the usual topics dealing with current issues in consumer law, I assume the effect of the current pandemic on consumers will be of interest to faculty, as well as our students. The pandemic or other long term disasters raise issues regarding whether current consumer law “works,” when such a disaster strikes, and how the teaching of consumer law may change as virtual classes become more common. I will keep you informed about deadlines and other details as the time gets closer and hope to see you next May, but for now…..

My Op-ed in The Hill: Should colleges be immune if they negligently infect students with COVID-19?

by Jeff Sovern

Here. Excerpt:

As colleges and universities attempt to persuade students that taking classes on campus is not risky, they are lobbying legislators to pass laws insulating schools from liability if people on campus become infected with COVID-19 due to the school’s own negligence. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

* * *

An industry whose business model depends on convincing people that young adults will be safe with them cannot survive by hiding behind shields against liability for their own misconduct. Instead, universities should trumpet that people can have confidence that they will keep students safe because they will pay a price if they don’t — and then they should take every reasonable step to keep students safe. 

DC sues predatory online lender for making illegal high-interest loans

DC's Attorney General today filed a lawsuit against Elevate, an online lender, for deceptively marketing high-cost loans carrying interest rates far above the District’s cap on interest rates. According to the complaint, Elevate is not a licensed moneylender in the District but offered two kinds of short-term loan products with interest rates of between 99 and 251 percent -- up to 42 times the legal limit. Over roughly two years, Elevate made 2,551 loans to District consumers and collected millions of dollars in interest. The  lawsuit seek to stop Elevate from engaging in misleading business practices, require Elevate to void the loans made to District residents, return interest paid by consumers as restitution, and pay civil penalties.

The complaint is here.

Brian Fitzpatrick on "Why Class Actions Are Something both Liberals and Conservatives Can Love"

Law prof Brian Fitzpatrick has written Why Class Actions Are Something both Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, which does a number of interesting things including defend the class-action cy pres doctrine. Here's the abstract: 

In Professor Redish’s review of my new book, The Conservative Case for Class Actions, he argues that liberals should oppose the class action because the cy pres doctrine used to distribute settlement money is democratically illegitimate and that conservatives should oppose it because it is inferior to government policing of the marketplace or no policing at all. But cy pres is a longstanding common law doctrine and relying on it is no more illegitimate than relying on any other common law doctrine that has not been abrogated by legislation. Moreover, contrary to popular caricatures, conservatives actually do believe the marketplace needs some policing, and, for all the reasons we prefer private solutions over government solutions in other areas, we should prefer a private police force staffed with class action lawyers over government bureaucrats.

Consumer groups oppose colleges' efforts to get immunity for negligently infecting students with Covid-19

Here.

Abstracts due by August 3 for March 2021 Berkeley Consumer Law Scholars Conference at Boston University

We're received the following call for abstracts:

The Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice and conference co-organizers Kathleen Engel, Ted Mermin, Rory Van Loo, and Lauren Willis are pleased to announce the third annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference (CLSC), which will be held the afternoon and evening of March 4 and all day March 5, 2021, at Boston University. In light of current uncertainties surrounding travel, we hope to be able to meet in person but plan to make arrangements for potential remote participation depending on how the situation develops.

 

The conference will support in-progress scholarship, foster a community of consumer law scholars, and build bridges with scholars in other disciplines who focus on consumer issues. The bulk of the conference will consist of paper workshop sessions at which discussants, rather than authors, introduce and lead discussions of the papers. Everyone who attends a session will be expected to have read the paper; everyone is a participant. Speakers will include both leading scholars and prominent policymakers.

 

If you would like to workshop an unpublished paper, please submit: (1) a title, (2) a short abstract that grounds your work in relevant literature, and (3) an outline HERE by August 3, 2020 (abstract and outline should be uploaded as a single file). We will inform selected authors that their submissions have been accepted no later than October 2.

 

Comments to CFPB Conservative/Industry Taskforce Due June 1 During a Pandemic

by Jeff Sovern

As we previously noted, the CFPB's Conservative/Industry Taskforce created to make "recommendations for ways to improve and strengthen consumer financial laws and regulations" issued a request for information. Comments are due Monday, June 1. As far as I know, the deadline for commenting has not been extended, despite the fact that we are in a pandemic and there have been requests for an extension. I filed a very short comment complaining about the composition of the taskforce and that the deadline for the request for information is ill-timed. I urge readers of the blog to do the same. The body of my comment appears below the fold.

Foohey, Jiménez & Odinet: The Debt Collection Pandemic

Pamela Foohey of Indiana Maurer, Dalié Jiménez of Irvine, and Christopher K. Odinet of Iowa have written The Debt Collection Pandemic, California Law Review Online (2020 Forthcoming). Here is the abstract:

As of May 2020, the United States' reaction to the unique and alarming threat of COVID-19 has partially succeeded in slowing the virus’s spread. Saving people’s lives, however, came at a severe economic cost. Americans’ economic anxiety understandably spiked. In addition to worrying about meeting basic expenses, people’s anxieties about money necessarily included what might happen if they could not cover already outstanding debts. The nearly 70 million Americans with debts already in collection faced heightened anxiety about their inability to pay.

The coronavirus pandemic is set to metastasize into a debt collection pandemic. The federal government can and should do something to put a halt to debt collection until people can get back to work and earn money to pay their debts. Yet it has done nothing to help people deal with their debts. Instead, states have tried to solve issues with debt collection in a myriad of patchwork and inconsistent ways. These efforts help some people and are worthwhile. But more efficient and comprehensive solutions exist. Because debt collection brought by the COVID-19 crisis will not dissipate anytime soon, even after the crisis ends, the need to implement comprehensive, longer-lasting solutions remains. These solutions largely fall on the shoulders of the federal government, though state attorney generals have the necessary power to help people effectively, provided they act in concert. If the government continues on its present course, a debt collection pandemic will follow the coronavirus pandemic.

Forbes: Stimulus Proposal: $10,000 In Credit Card Interest Relief During Coronavirus Pandemic

Here, by Shahar Ziv, taking a deep dive into Norm Silber's and my proposal. Excerpt:

Sadly, the coronavirus pandemic isn’t the first catastrophe to fuel consumer credit challenges. In a paper, Thriving on Adversity: Disclosing Corporate Mistreatment of Consumers Caught in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Exploring the Consumer Movement's Response to Crisis and Catastrophe, which was published in the Loyola Consumer Law Review, Norman Silber, the proposal’s lead author, outlined the progressive obstacles that consumers faced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: Americans let credit balances grow and could only afford to make minimum payments; high interest rates caused the amount owed to increase rapidly, which reduced the amount of available credit; credit scores started to drop, reducing credit lines and access to affordable borrowing; delinquencies and bankruptcies began to rise causing a strain on the national economy. “There were huge problems created as consumers, who were out of work and had extra expenses, all of a sudden couldn’t make installment payments,” Silber told me via phone. “Banks and credit card companies who were supposedly generous by postponing payments and interest, just deferred the problem and eventually starting charging consumers additional fees and getting tough with them.”

Applying the lessons learned from Katrina against the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis, Silber and Sovern developed a proposal, called the “Credit Card Interest Relief During the Pandemic Act” or CIRPA, to allow consumers and small businesses financed through credit card borrowing to have the credit they need to get past this crisis.

The relationship between the massive pre-virus tax cuts and tariffs and the covid-19 recession

That's the topic of this piece by LA Times reporter Don Lee.

"Consumer bureau draws fire for pro-business tilt during crisis"

Read this article by Katy O'Donnell at Politico about the CFPB's activities during the health crisis. Here's an exerpt:

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is relaxing rules designed to shield Americans from abuse during the coronavirus crisis, saying the moves are necessary to give businesses flexibility during the pandemic. But with the agency facing an unprecedented wave of consumer complaints as millions of laid-off workers deal with their creditors, lawmakers and consumer advocates charge that the bureau is exploiting the crisis to further a pro-industry agenda. They’re demanding that it set aside all rulemaking unrelated to the crisis and take a more forceful stance toward businesses that could use the chaos to rip off consumers.