CreditSlips

Location, location, location: ATM Fee Disclosure Edition

07/07/12

The number one agenda item for small banks is to repeal the physical, on-machine disclosure requirement for ATMs.  Yes, I'm serious, that, that is the top agenda item for small banks. And they wonder why they're not doing so well...

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Some Advice from the IMF: Cramdown Mortgages in Bankruptcy

07/04/12

The International Monetary Fund has focused its critical gaze on us. Just in time for the holiday marking the end of our colonial period, the IMF has completed its "Mission to the United States of America."  See here.  The IMF has held up its neocolonial mirror and found us problematic: "The U.S. recovery remains tepid."  Anyone disagree? Annoying to have outsiders tell us the truth.

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Overspending in India

07/02/12

Check out this story in the New York Times about free-wheeling consumer credit in India. Much of the article focuses on how Indians are using consumer credit to pay for cosmetic surgery. At one point, I had a collection of online advertisements offering Americans easy credit for different types of cosmetic surgery, but that was several universities ago.

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The New Cramdown

06/29/12

For the past couple of years, I've been thinking that cramdown is dead as a policy solution. But I was thinking about cramdown as requiring legislation. It doesn't. We could start doing it tomorrow. Under current bankruptcy law, a Chapter 13 plan may be confirmed only if secured creditors receive their collateral, receive the value of their collateral, or consent to the plan.

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News Flash: It is Illegal for Debt Collectors to Stalk Debtors on Facebook or Threaten to Kill Their Dogs

06/28/12

Do any of you read creditcards.com? It is a great source of info on various topics, not just credit cards. Today’s story featured three debt collection horror tales, as well as a state of the nation of nasty collection efforts. According to the story, in 2011, the FTC received 180,000 complaints about debt collectors, an increase of over 40,000 from 2010.

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Fighting Foreclosure Fatigue

06/27/12

Folks in Washington tell me there is a general sense of “foreclosure fatigue” in our nation’s capital. It’s just so boring to keep thinking about all the people losing their homes year after year. Can’t we move on to something new? This attitude goes along with a failure to do anything meaningful to get out of the five-year-old mortgage crisis, still very much with us. More charitably, the people who would like to do something see no political opening in an election year.

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Why Don't Economists Read the Legal Literature?

06/26/12

When I read economics articles, I'm often struck by the absence of citations to the legal literature. Citations to legal works, even when very much on point, are frequently missing from literature reviews and citation lists. There are exceptions to be sure.  Some notable articles and scholars are cited routinely, and I've also noticed that economists will cite articles in some of the law & economics journals (like JLE and JLEO), but then economists also publish in those journals.

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FHFA Wants Money Transferred from Local Government to Bondholders

06/25/12

FHFA has sued the State of Illinois and some local government units claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from state and local real estate transfer taxes. FHFA's argument is basically that the GSEs are subject only to non-discriminatory real estate taxes and real estate transfer taxes aren't real estate taxes.  

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The Coasean Republic

06/24/12

At times I've joked to my classes about the possibility of a Coasean Republic, a state I call "Coase-istan" (or perhaps Kosistan), in which the entire world operates via private ordering.  In Coase-istan, government does, well, nothing except put service provision out for private bids.  Mail would be delivered only by private express companies like Fed-Ex.  Prisons would be privately operated. Executions would be contracted out to the highest bidder.

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Eaton v. Fannie Mae Analysis

06/22/12

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court finally issued its long-awaited ruling in Eaton v. Fannie Mae. This case involved the question of whether a "naked mortgagee"--a mortgagee that was not also the holder of the promissory note--had standing to foreclose.

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