CreditSlips

Is Cryptocurrency What Makes Ransomware Possible?

05/22/19

The story about Baltimore's entire municipal IT system being held hostage by ransomware has two angles that might be of interest to Slips readers. 

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ALI Consumer Contracts Restatement-What's at Stake

05/16/19

The American Law Institute's membership will vote next Tuesday (the 21st) on whether to approve the ALI's Consumer Contracts Restatement project.  Let me recap why you should care about this project:  it opens the door for businesses to use contract to abuse consumers in basically any way they want.

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Payday Rule Comments

05/16/19

Because the ALI Consumer Contracts Restatement plus grading hasn't given me enough to do this week, I thought I would gin up some brief comments on the CFPB's proposed repeal of the Payday Rule.  My comments are here.   

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Podcast on ALI Consumer Contracts Restatement

05/16/19

I did a podcast for the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast about the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project.  It's not often that you will see me on the same side of an issue as the podcast's host, Alan Kaplinsky, an attorney at Ballard Spahr who represents financial services firms.

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ALI Consumer Contracts Restatement--More Problems with the Legal Research

05/16/19

More problems are emerging with the legal research underlying the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project.  The Consumer Contracts Restatement has been the subject of scholarly criticism for a while because of its novel quantitative empirical approach (case counting).  The Restatement stands on six empirical studies of consumer contracts.

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ALI Engages in Cheap Intimidation Tactics in Its Attempt to Ram Through the Consumer Contracts Restatement

05/16/19

As Credit Slips readers know, I've been fighting the American Law Institute's Consumer Contracts Restatement project for several years.  I think it started with good intentions, but it's unfortunately turned into a remarkably anti-consumer project.

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Round 2 -- Do the Euro CACs Have to be Used if There is a Need to Restructure a Euro Area Sovereign's Debt?

05/10/19

The intriguing question raised by Mark Weidemaier’s superb new paper posted a few weeks ago (here) was whether, if a Euro area country hits a debt crisis, it would be mandatory for it to use the Euro CACs that are now part of the majority of Euro area sovereign bonds.  Mark’s paper says no (for more, see also Tyler Zellinger, here; and Buchta, Shan, Plambeck & Shufro,

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Ouch. (Puerto Rico Edition)

05/06/19

The First Circuit responds to the Oversight Board's request for a stay until the Supreme Court can rule on their cert. petition, with regard to the Constitutionality of the Board's appointment (emphasis added):

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Middle Class Homeowners Are the Biggest Winners from Student Loan Forgiveness

04/29/19

A lot of the criticism of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s student loan forgiveness proposal has focused on how it's not fair to give loan forgiveness to current borrowers when past borrowers repaid their debts.  That criticism overlooks the enormous boost Senator Warren's proposal would give to the real estate market.

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The Student Loan Tax

04/29/19

Democrats’ policy proposals have sparked a vital and overdue debate on our system to pay for post-secondary education, and how that system burdens and redistributes income. The existing system combines a small share of taxpayer funding (via the Pell Grant) with a large share from the student loan tax. The student loan tax requires the students themselves to pay a percentage of their income for 20 to 25 years, collected not by the IRS but by private contractors for the US Education Department.

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