Credit Cards
Spooky: What lurks in the fine print of your credit cards! It’s Halloween and what lurks in the fine print of your credit card agreements can be downright spooky — and harmful to your consumer rights. Jeanine Skowronski interviews Theresa Amato, Paul Bland, Ira Rheingold, and others in The Hidden Risks in Your Credit Card’s…
Read MoreConsumer Contracts Should Not Be Secrets The Hill‘s Congress Blog published here Professor Jeff Sovern and Theresa Amato’s description of their multi-hour odyssey to obtain the full terms of one credit card contract without having to apply for the card. Imagine what would be required to obtain several sets of terms to be able to…
Read MoreCFPB Releases Credit Card Study/Holds Public Hearing/ Fair Contracts Provides Testimony On October 2, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released it’s first biennial report on the effects of the Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act of 2009 or the “CARD Act”. In a public field hearing in downtown Chicago, Director Richard Cordray summarized…
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 MoreThe Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 On May 22, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act). The Act imposes restrictions on many credit card issuer practices that have been the subject of criticism over the years. While most…
Read MoreThe New York Times explains (05 24 10) how the Federal Reserve Board has introduced an online database listing the terms and conditions of more than 300 credit card issuers to help consumers find a card that best suits their personal finance needs, but which is riddled with fine print and difficult to comprehend language.…
Read MoreTax forms, credit agreements, healthcare legislation: They’re crammed with gobbledygook, says Alan Siegel, and incomprehensibly long. He calls for a simple, sensible redesign — and plain English — to make legal paperwork intelligible to the rest of us. http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_jargon.html
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