Posted on 19 October 2010.
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank’s latest comments on the BCFP:
The consumer bureau will protect customers from subprime mortgage abuses, excessive overdraft fees, regulate check cashing services that charge exorbitant fees and require lenders to give customers clear information on their loans.
“It is the single best set of consumer protections in U.S. history,” he said.
Frank said he is proud of the overall financial regulation bill passed in the summer which, he said, will make another financial crisis “very, very unlikely.”
Posted in CFPB Nomination
Posted on 18 October 2010.
In response to the story below about the FTC blocking debit card advances:
More tyranny.
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on 18 October 2010.
A debate is raging in Mississippi. From the story:
Foes of the financial practice, such as Carol Penick, executive director of the Women’s Fund of Mississippi, and Roberta Avila, executive director of the Steps Coalition, argue that: “There is something terribly wrong when the needs of cash-strapped workers are exploited to support a billion-dollar poverty industry. It is also morally repugnant. No one in Mississippi needs to pay a 572 percent interest rate. We all deserve access to short-term, transparent and fair loans.”
To which Ryan H. Harris of Check Into Cash, Inc., would reply: “Efforts to regulate the payday lending industry are misguided and stand to kill an entire industry, taking with it hundreds of jobs and a source of credit for Mississippi residents. This push is focused on unfairly calculating the cost of a two-week loan on an annual percentage basis. … Mississippi residents are smart enough to make their own financial choices.”
So we asked John Allison, who has been commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Banking and Consumer Finance since 2000, what he thought.
Allison said the Mississippi Legislature should lower the margin of profit in a payday loan. Lenders can now charge a fee of $21.95 per $100 loaned for up to 30 days, one of the highest rates in the nation. He thinks that fee could and should be lowered to $17 or $18 per $100.
How about not setting a rate and letting the market decide?
Posted in Mississippi
Posted on 18 October 2010.
The Capital Research Center has just posted a lengthy report about the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, the groups behind it and the motivation to pass it. Looking backward is interesting, but ultimately we have to deal with the reality of the bill having been passed, the BCFP created and the rules it sets. Here’s a link to the study.
Posted in Elizabeth Warren, regulation
Posted on 18 October 2010.
I don’t know what to make of this story:
The Iowa based MetaBank has been ordered to no more make short-term payday or refund of tax loans to their customers with debit cards that are prepaid. Federal regulators or more specifically The Office of Thrift Supervision made this order as such activities were violating the general trade practice laws. Due to this order, MetaBank’s popular program which was named as iAdvance will be invalid hereafter. Meta Financial Group Inc is the holding company for MetaBank and it stated that they were informed about the decision on 6th October.
Posted in alternatives, regulation
Posted on 18 October 2010.
Posted in Elizabeth Warren
Posted on 18 October 2010.
From the Billings Gazette:
Whether a payday loan is a good deal or not depends on the borrower’s circumstances. Sure, it would be preferable to avoid paying a fee to borrow a couple hundred dollars for two weeks. But if the alternative is bank overdraft fees or late charges on credit card accounts, a payday loan may be the better choice.
There’s one more thing for voters to consider. With the regulations that Montana has already placed on payday lenders, 87 licensed businesses statewide employ more than 500 people. If I-164 becomes law, they probably will be out of work on Jan. 1.
Montana law already restricts payday lending to prevent the trap that I-164 purports to fix.
Posted in Montana, positive media coverage
Posted on 15 October 2010.
Time Magazine columnist raising some interesting questions. From the story:
Today, Elizabeth Warren, the White House’s “architect” for the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a non-political body, has traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to the 15th Congressional District, where she will address a public “consumer roundtable discussion” as part of her effort to stand up the new agency. Her travel was announced by the Treasury Department, and according to a Treasury official I spoke with, the public event is just a single detour on a longer trip which is focused on private meetings in preparation for the new agency. The Treasury official said the event is entirely non-political, and the local Democratic congresswoman, Mary Jo Kilroy, was not invited. The event is hosted by three left-leaning non-profit groups, Policy Matters, COHHIO and Americans for Financial Reform.
But Kilroy is not just any congresswoman, and Ohio-15 is not just any district. She is among the most endangered House members in the nation, and, as a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, has been a major supporter of Warren and Wall Street reform. Her campaign message borrows heavily from Warren’s own work. “I’ll be a watchdog for your money like it’s my own,” Kilroy says in her latest ad, after a number of people praise her for taking on the banks and the credit card companies.
Posted in Elizabeth Warren, Ohio
Posted on 15 October 2010.
Former Center for Responsible Lending executive takes job at the FDIC.
Posted in Center for Responsible Lending
Posted on 15 October 2010.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Franks says so. From the story:
“I can’t see many examples of there being an excess of consumer protection,” the Newton Democrat said yesterday following a speech to kick off Suffolk University’s Moakley Breakfast Series at the federal courthouse.
“There are very strict rules about what she can and can’t do,” he said, “but the notion that we will overprotect consumers is a strange one.”
Posted in federal legislation, Financial Reform Bill - CFPB
