Underneath All Are the Contracts
Ralph Nader explains the problem with standard form contracts and introduces faircontracts.org.
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The Fine Print, a Fine Read on How a Rigged Economy Harms Consumers
Rigged Economy Harms Consumers Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston asks why the United States ranks forty-seventh out of 224 countries in infant mortality, forty-sixth in the share of our economy spent on public education, thirty-seventh in the quality of our health care (with approximately 50 million without insurance), and “dead last” in 2009 among…
October Surprise Lawsuit or Template for Holding Wrongdoers Accountable in the Mortgage Crisis?
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…
Pew Charitable Trusts Initiative Leads to Simplified Checking Account Forms
Pew 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…
Why Consumers with Interest Rates in their Contracts Should Care about LIBOR
Gary 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
Professor Jeff Sovern on Mortgage Disclosures
Law 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…
LIBOR and Bank Manipulation of Interest Rates in Fine Print Contracts
Robert 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…
Fair Contracts Submits Comments to the CFPB on the Forced Arbitration Study
Fair 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…
Fair Contracts Discussed in May 7 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin Article
Fair Contracts is discussed in May 7 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin Article on Plain Language Legislation in Illinois, reprinted here with permission.