Consumer Finance

When Nudges Fail: Slippery Defaults

02/12/13

Now that my last few posts have bludgeoned consumer financial education and at least bloodied disclosure, and given that my suggestion of comprehension requirements is completely untested as a means of consumer protection for financial products, what about “nudges

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Disclosure 3.0: Making Disclosure Smarter

02/12/13

What if, instead of making the consumer smarter or the disclosures more comprehensible, as discussed in my last several posts, we made financial product disclosures smarter?

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Putting Disclosure to the Test: User Comprehension Requirements

02/12/13

Given the limitations of Disclosure 2.0 and Disclosure 2.5 I described in my last posts, what is to be done? To answer this question, we might first ask what financial product disclosure is attempting to achieve. Although disclosure has several aims, one is consumer comprehension to the degree necessary to enable good decisions. Disclosure rules require particular information to be imparted, often in a specified format.

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Many Young People Will Die in Debt, but Hopefully Not From Debt

01/23/13

I had a weird night’s sleep and then openned up my e-mail to find this headline from credit and collection news “Does The Consumer Bureau Harm Those It Claims to Protect? & Study Predicts Millions Will Die In Credit Card Red.” The immediate implication in my drowsy state was that the CFPB was somehow killing people. Wow.

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Usury Laws Are Dead. Long Live the New Usury Law. The CFPB's Ability to Repay Mortgage Rule

01/11/13

The CFPB has come out with its long awaited qualified
mortgage (QM) rulemaking under Title XIV of the Dodd-Frank Act.  The QM rulemaking is by far the most important
CFPB action to date and will play a crucial role in determining the shape of
the US housing finance market going forward. The QM rulemaking also rep

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Happy New Year: Shall We Make Some Resolutions?

01/03/13

Welcome to 2013 Credit Slips Readers! It’s time to think about our debtor/creditor future, what to keep and what to leave behind. Sometimes I ask my fellow bloggers if they made any financially-related resolutions but usually everyone say no, so this year, we’ll just make a nice list of resolutions through your comments!   My List:

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Gift Cards and Bankruptcy

11/29/12

There's a linguistic irony that "gift" is the German word for poison. What, then, should we make of the "gift card"?  

Senator Richard Blumenthal's introduced new legislation, the Gift Card Consumer Protection Act (S.3636) that aims to close up the loopholes in existing gift card regulation and to protect consumers with gift cards when the retailer goes bankrupt. The legislation has a few moving parts:

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Walmart for Women?

11/11/12

Say what you will about Walmart, but give it credit perhaps for partnering in a project aimed to empower female entrepreneurs.  Walmart's Women's Economic Empowerment Project in partnership with Enactus (a global non-profit organization) has been criticized by some as merely part of a public relations campaign to combat image problems in the wake of sex-discrimination lawsuits.

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MyConsumerTips.info

10/23/12
I have been working for a few years in developing and creating a consumer outreach website at MyConsumerTips.info.  The site is purely non-profit and has no sponsors or advertisers. It aims to simply provide consumers with “consumer tips” that change each day, independent summaries regarding debt-related and other consumer rights, quizzes and polls regarding such issues, and other consumer protection resources. It is user-friendly and interactive.
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The Gender Divide in Payday Lending

10/15/12

Nathalie Martin has done great work and has posted comments on Creditslips.org regarding payday lending. I also have been interested in how these payday loans prey on consumers with the least resources and power, and have helped consumers with related issues through my outreach work. At the same time, I have had the privilege to have students like Adria Robinson, who take great interest in these consumer issues.

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