News Topic: Debt Collection

Federal bankruptcy law defers to the states on a critical issue: what is the basic minimum income and property that debtors need not surrender to creditors.  Four states protect 100% of workers' wages, while 21 states allow creditors to garnish ... Read full article

American Banker reporters Maria Aspan and Jeff Horwitz have been sharing cutting edge news about the debt collection and debt buyer world for some time. The news they share this week is good news indeed. They report that JPMorgan Chase is pulling back ... Read full article

In the fict ... Read full article

So just a bit more information on garnishing social security and other public benefits now people who know more about that than I do have joined the conversation. Basically 42 U.S.C. § 407(a) has always precluded creditors (other than the IRS for taxes or ... Read full article

Jonathan Ginsberg posted an interesting article on the National Association of Chapter 13 trustees web site this weekend, that will be relevant to many of our readers as well. ... Read full article

The National Consumer Law Center’s e-blast this morning contained some very good news for consumers.  The 6th Circuit has just thrown out a nationwide settlement involving Midland, a robo-signing debt buyer, and over a million consumers.  This will allow ... Read full article

A recent FTC study of errors in credit reports is getting a lot of press. According to the most recent in a number of studies of the accuracy of credit reports, about 5% of U.S. consumers have an error on their credit report that is serious enough to ... Read full article

In December, I attended a terrific conference examining historical parallels to the European debt crisis. I was there to talk about the early-20th century antecedents of modern collective action clauses, the magic contractual potion - or is it snake oil ? ... Read full article

Until a month or so ago, you could have asked almost any economist or political scientist whether sovereign borrowers worry about legal enforcement, and, by way of answer, you would gotten a technical version of "Huh?" Academics disagree about ... Read full article

At long last, debt collection goes Hollywood! Brad Pitt's productio company Plan B and HBO are developing what looks like a new TV series called " Paper ," a drama inspired by Jake Halpern's essay " Pay Up " featured in the ... Read full article

There is a widely-held view that sovereign bonds don't contain the optimal terms but are slow to incorporate better ones. Right or wrong, that view has prompted many government-sponsored initiatives to reform bond contracts, such as the current plan ... Read full article

In my last post , I said that the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had interpreted the pari passu clause in Argentina's bonds as a promise to forego a century's worth of restructuring practices. The district judge still needs to ... Read full article

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 ... Read full article

Professor Peter Holland (U Maryland Law) has written a fantastic paper  explaining in great detail how to defend against a debt-buyer-lawsuit, and possibly recover for Fair Debt Collection Practices Violations as well. ... Read full article

Tell me.  Are we allowed to do anything we like to those with the least power and money in our society? Are there no limits? We know that in some states, private actors have been permitted to charge 500-1,000% for loans, but what about public actors? Can ... Read full article

Back in April, I posted about Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson investigating allegations that Accretive Health Care aggressively collected debts from hospital patients. These allegations included claims that Accreive was obtaining payments from ... Read full article

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 ... Read full article

A few times I have caught Storage Wars , a television show on A&E. When storage units customers do not pay their fees, the contents are auctioned off by the storage unit company. The show follows professional treasure hunters who bid at these ... Read full article