CreditSlips

The core product that insurance consumers buy is a standard form contract.  Unlike virtually any other market, though, it is virtually impossible for purchasers of personal lines coverage (i.e.

Many thanks to Credit Slips for inviting me to guest blog over the next week or so.  My hope during this time is to explore what I view as an important puzzle in consumer protection regulation: why it is that consumer protection strategies in insurance and credit are so different in the United States.  

This week we are a happy to welcome guest blogger Professor Daniel Schwarcz from the University of Minnesota School of Law. Daniel has done some great research in the area of property and casualty insurance and consumer protection. He is also very interested in consumer perspectives in health insurance and regulatory design in general.

Over the past couple of years, the Massachusetts Attorney General's office has reached settlements with a number of major banks regarding mortgage securitization. These settlements has received very little notice in the press, but I think they provide a real template for future AG settelements and are worth examining. 

Yves Smith has a provocatively entitled post about the BoA MBS settlement.  Yves appropriately excoriates Bill Clinton for saying some plain old stupid things about the settlement (namely that it is going to have a meaningful impact on principal reduction mods--it ain't and can't.