CFPB On Verge Of Deal With State AGs To Share Information

Bloomberg news reports that the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the state attorneys general are on the verge of a deal to share information for use in investigations and prosecutions. To quote the report:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said his agency is close to a deal to share data among state and federal authorities to probe abuses by banks and other financial services companies. The accord will “establish a general framework to share data on consumer financial protection issues,” Cordray said in a speech to the National Association of State Attorneys General today in Washington. ... The information-sharing deal focuses on using the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel network as a clearinghouse for complaints on financial services, said Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina. ... “Strong complaint data will be critical for us in detecting trends in scams and unfair lending,” Cooper said in an interview. “We hope that exchange goes both ways.”

 

Recap of D.C. Circuit's Arguments on Legality of EPA's Greenhouse Gas Regulations

Last week, the D.C. Circuit heard challenges to EPA regulations that would regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Anthony Moriello attended the arguments and reports on them below. Mr. Moriello is a third-year student at Georgetown University Law Center.

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by Anthony Moriello

D.C. Circuit Hears Argument on EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rules

On February 28 and 29, 2012, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral argument in Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, No. 09-1322 et al., consolidated challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations. The challengers—a coalition of industry groups and some states—attack EPA’s “endangerment finding” that GHGs threaten public health to a degree warranting regulatory action. (74 Fed. Reg. 66,496).  Also challenged are EPA’s fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks (75 Fed. Reg. 25,324) and its “tailoring rule,” which limits current permitting requirements for stationary GHG sources to the largest emitters only. (75 Fed. Reg. 31,514).

EPA promulgated the challenged regulations under the Clean Air Act, maintaining that they respond lawfully to the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, 127 S. Ct. 1438 (2007), which held that EPA violated the Act by failing to regulate GHGs. The challenges to EPA’s regulations, therefore, present a threshold question: Are EPA’s regulations compelled or permitted by Massachusetts v. EPA, or are they beyond the agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act?

Student Loan Debt: Massive and Past Due

The N.Y. Federal Reserve just completed this study on student loan debt. Total outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. is $870 billion. 15.4% of the 241 million people in the United States who have a credit report with Equifax, the company that provided data to the Fed, carry student loan debt. And get this: Adjusting to exclude student loan debtors who are in a grace period, about 25% of student loan debt is in default (to be precise, about 21% of all student loans and about 27% of all student loan debtors). These rates are far higher than the delinquency rates for credit card debt, mortgages, and car loans.

So, what will happen? It strikes me as unlikely that most of the debtors will be able to pay their way out of default. Will the taxpayers foot the bill?  Bear in mind that, except in unusual circumstances (what the law calls "undue hardship"), student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Read more about the issue in today's LA Times.

Does Digitalizing Health Records Cut Health Care Costs?

It's not clear.

Poll Shows Public Dissatisfied with Affordable Care Act. Why?

A recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows that more Americans think that the national healthcare reform legislation will make things worse than think it will make things better. The same poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans think the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional. David Lazarus discusses here what the law does and does not provide and ask whether Americans really know how the law operates.

In 2009, Mitt Romney Touted His Massachusetts Health Care Plan As A Free-Market Model For The Nation

It is all in this 2009 USA Today op-ed. First of all, just in case you had any doubt, Romney just adored his state's individual mandate -- ya know, the same one that's in "Obamacare." The same one that's being challenged in the Supreme Court. The one that Romney now claims he hates. Romney explained, just as President Obama does, that an individual mandate prevents free-riders from harming the system:

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.

And he definitely thought that his plan in Massachusetts was a model for a national law:

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

Ht to BuzzFeed.

Bank Fees Driving Consumers to Credit Unions

The LA Times reports that

Consumers fed up with the rising tide of bank fees helped the nation's credit unions more than double their number of new customers last year, new figures show. More than 1.3 million Americans opened new credit union accounts last year, up from less than 600,000 in 2010, the National Credit Union Administration reported. That brings the number of credit union members to a record 91.8 million.

The paper reports that the Occupy Movement -- which was targetted in part at big banks -- and the Bank of America debit-card-fee fiasco were likely factors in consumers' decisions to switch to credit unions.

The article suggests to me that competiton among financial institutions for consumers' business will provide some degee of consumer protection regarding bank fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is particularly concerned over hidden or misleading fees.

Court Permanently Enjoins FDA's New Graphic Cigarette Labels, Upholding Tobacco Industry's First Amendment Challenge

Last June, we blogged about the FDA's new graphic cigarette labels, one of which is pictured below. After that, in November, we discussed U.S. District Judge Richard Leon's First-Amendment-based preliminary injunction against the labels. In an opinion issued today, Judge Leon granted the industry's motion for summary judgment and finally enjoined enforcement of the FDA rule that imposes the new labels. The Blog of the Legal Times has this report on the decision.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has this front-page story.

 

Federal Judge Sends Disgusting, Racist Anti-Obama Email to Six of His "Old Buddies" and Acquaintances

This blog is dedicated to informing our readers about developments in consumer law and policy. Fair treatment in the courts -- in consumer cases, as in all other cases -- depends on a judiciary that treats litigants with dignity. A racist judge cannot be trusted to honor that principle. This blog entry is posted with that thought in mind.

Richard Cebull, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, has acknowledged that he forwarded a racist email to six of his "old buddies" and acquaintances. Judge Cebull admits that the email -- which Judge Cebull received, read, and then deliberately forwarded to his "buddies" -- was a racist attack on President Obama. Judge Cebull further admits that he is "not a fan" of the President.

The judge's "explanation" for his conduct? The communication with his pals was intended to be "private," and, although the email's content is racist, "I'm not that way." To read the forwarded email and Judge Cebull's bizarre cover note to his friends, click on the link above.

Suzanna Sherry on Advocacy in Last Term's Class Action Cases

Suzanna Sherry 

of Vanderbilt has written Hogs Get Slaughtered at the Supreme Court, Supreme Court Review (forthcoming).  Here's the abstract:

Class action plaintiffs lost two major five-to-four cases last Term, with potentially significant consequences for future class litigation: AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and Wal-Mart v. Dukes. The tragedy is that the impact of each of these cases might have been avoided had the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the lower courts, and the dissenting Justices not overreached. In this Article, I argue that those on the losing side insisted on broad and untenable positions and thereby set themselves up for an equally broad defeat; they got greedy and suffered the inevitable consequences. Unfortunately, the consequences will redound to the detriment of many other potential litigants. And these two cases are not isolated tragedies; they provide a window into a larger problem of Rule 23. When plaintiffs’ lawyers chart a course for future litigants, they may be tempted to frame issues broadly for the “big win” – with disastrous consequences. I suggest that it is up to the courts, and especially to those judges most sympathetic to the interests of class-action plaintiffs, to avoid the costs of lawyers’ overreaching. That is exactly what the dissenting Justices (and the judges below) failed to do in these cases.