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October Surprise Lawsuit or Template for Holding Wrongdoers Accountable in the Mortgage Crisis? A security is a contract that can be assigned a value and traded – something Wall Street does all the time. It may be a bond or a share, and backed by something of value, such as a mortgage. When you hear…
Read MorePew Charitable Trust has surveyed the checking account paperwork of the major banks, producing two major studies showing the exhorbitantly long median length of the paperwork involved in opening these accounts and making suggestions for reform, including on overdraft fees and the reordering of withdrawals. Their most recent study from their Checking in an Electronic…
Read MoreGary Gensler, the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Commission, explains in the New York Times why consumers with interest rates in their contracts should care about the integrity of Libor–the London interbank offered rate–which is used as a benchmark average interest rate at which large international banks can borrow money. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/opinion/libor-naked-and-exposed.html?_r=1
Read MoreLaw professor Jeff Sovern, a coordinator of the Consumer Law and Policy Blog, and a member of the Fair Contracts Advisory Board, has an excellent piece in the New York Times today titled “Help for the Perplexed Home Buyer.” He notes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed new rules to clarify housing loan disclosure…
Read MoreRobert Shapiro explains The LIBOR Mess in the Globalist today, noting that: LIBOR rates are a very big deal, because they are benchmarks for countless other interest rates. The majority of U.S. adjustable-rate mortgages, for example, are set at a LIBOR rate plus two or three percentage points. So are millions of student loans, auto loans…
Read MoreFair Contracts’ 2012 Contract Reform Team submitted comments to the Consumer Financial Protect Bureau in response to their request for information regarding the study on "pre-dispute arbitration agreements," which we call "forced arbitration." Special thanks to Patrick Gleeson of Loyola University Chicago School of Law for all his work on this project. Citizen Works also…
Read MoreFair Contracts is discussed in May 7 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin Article on Plain Language Legislation in Illinois, reprinted here with permission.
Read MoreThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced today that it will study the impact of forced arbitration in consumer financial services contracts, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act passed in 2010. The CFPB is seeking public comments by June 23, 2012. A 2009 Public Citizen Report Forced Arbitration: Unfair and Everywhere, co-authored and researched by the Fair…
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Here are two differently-sized sheets of downloadable labels so you can pass on the message….
Read MoreFair Contracts and Ralph Nader made a Freedom of Information Act Request to find out how much money the major airlines keep from those unused, nonrefundable tickets people don’t or can’t or forget to use within the one-year expiration limit set by the airlines in their fine print contracts of carriage terms. It turns out…
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