David Lazarus of the LA Times on Car Rental Fees

David Lazarus of LA Times explains here why there should be more disclosure of car rental fees. Lazarus has also done a short video on the subject.

The National Transportation Safety Board Calls for Banning All Non-Emergency Driver Use of Cell Phone and other PEDs

The National Transportation Safety Board has called for all states to ban all non-emergency use by drivers of cell phones and other personal electronic devices. NTSB's recommendation extends to all PEDs, whether hand-held or hands-free. The NTSB does not have authority to impose this policy by regulation, but its views are often held in high regard by federal and state policy makers.

Bloomberg Businessweek: Obama Unlikely to Get Opportunity to Appoint Cordray in Recess

Here.  But consumer advocates say it isn't over yet, at The Hill's On the Money Blog.

National Consumer Law Center Says States Not Doing Enough to Curb Abuse by For-Profit Educational Institutions

The National Consumer Law Center says that "[a]s for-profit post-secondary schools have rapidly expanded throughout the United States, state government has frequently failed to challenge for-profit school abuses and fraud." In this comprehensive report, NCLC explains the states' failings in detail and what they can do to curb the abuse and fraud. Go to the report's home page, which includes an executive summary, NCLC's press release, and the types of relief from fraud or abuse students may seek on a state-by-state basis.

Senator Lindsay Graham Calls CFPB "Something Out of the Stalinist Era"

by Jeff Sovern

He said it on Meet the Press.  You can watch it here;  you can also find coverage here and here.  His claim seems to be based on the Bureau's having a director rather than a commission and not being subject to the congressional budgetary process.  Exactly like the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which Republicans seems to have no problems with.  Could the difference be that the banks have captured the OCC and not the Bureau?  Incidentally, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, among industries commercial banks are the eleventh largest contributor to Graham, while "miscellaneous finance" rank thirteenth. 

The CFPB's (Non-)Model Credit Card Agreement

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has drafted what it believes is a simple, easy to understand agreement that will aid consumers in deciding whether to apply for a credit card and make credit terms more transparent. The agency says that the agreement "is not a model form, and use is not mandatory. ... We believe our approach will help consumers better understand their credit card agreements."

You can provide your comments to the CFPB at the bottom of this version of the agreement. You may want to compare the CFPB's agreement with the agreements currently used by credit card issuers.

Michelle Singletary has written this article about the CFPB's efforts and explains that the new agreement is being used in a pilot project by the Pentagon Federal Credit Union.

Should You Boycott Lowe's?

Here is something that may be interesting to consumers. Lowe's, the big-box home and hardware store, sponsored a cable TV reality show called "All-American Muslim." According to the LA Times, the show "chronicles the lives of five families in Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb with a large Muslim and Arab American population." The Florida Family Association, an organization that pressures companies to stop sponsoring programming that it doesn't like, campaigned to get Lowe's to pull its ads from "All-American Muslim." And Lowe's caved.

Read the whole LA Times article here. The Florida Family Association suggests that it has caused 65 companies to pull their advertising from the program.

Welfare Reform and Chronic High Unemployment

Economist Nancy Folbre argues here that the 1996 Clinton-era welfare reform legislation -- which generally provides only short-term cash assistance while a parent is seeking work -- does not jibe with an econony, like the current U.S. economy, mired in chronic high unemployment. She says, therefore, that . . .

Welfare reform is in dire need of … reform. A bill recently introduced by Representative Gwen Moore, Democrat of Wisconsin, the Rewriting to Improve and Secure an Exit Out of Poverty Act, would provide permanent funding, modify work requirements so that education and training would qualify, and guarantee child care for ... work-eligible recipients [under the current law].

The 1996 reform was based on a supposed need to develop a work ethic among poor people. Ms. Folbre concludes, however, "[a] work ethic doesn’t help much when there is no work to be had."

Fed Researchers Find Subprime Loan Discrimination and Redlining

Ruben Hernandez-Murillo

 of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,

Andra C. Ghent

 of Baruch College (CUNY) - Zicklin School of Business, and

Michael Owyang

 also of the St. Louis Federal Reserve have written Race, Redlining, and Subprime Loan Pricing.  Here is the abstract:

We investigate whether race and ethnicity influenced subprime loan pricing during 2005, the peak of the subprime mortgage expansion. We combine loan-level data on the performance of non-prime securitized mortgages with individual- and neighborhood-level data on racial and ethnic characteristics for metropolitan areas in California and Florida. Using a model of rate determination that accounts for predicted loan performance, we evaluate the presence of statistical and taste-based discrimination, as well as disparate impact and disparate treatment discrimination, in mortgage rates. We find evidence of redlining as well as adverse pricing for blacks and Hispanics.

Paul Kirgis: Occupy Arbitration? Judicial Nonviolent Resistance

Here.  Paul is a colleague of mine.  Here's an excerpt:

In this year of nonviolent resistance, at least some lower courts seem to be engaging in a protest of sorts, seeking ways to avoid the inevitable logic of the recent decisions, especially Concepcion. Not surprisingly, California leads the resistance. For example, in its recent decision in Sanchez v. Valencia Holding Co., the California Court of Appeal invalidated an arbitration agreement containing a class waiver in a used car contract on unconscionability grounds, finding that the agreement was a contract of adhesion and unfairly one-sided (the court focused on a variety of terms besides the class-action waiver). And in Brown v. Ralphs Grocery Co., the California Court of Appeal invalidated a class-action waiver in an arbitration agreement as applied to a representative action under California’s Private Attorney General Act, which allows a plaintiff to bring an action on behalf of other employees to enforce the Labor Code, in the process distinguishing representative actions from class actions.