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March 08, 2008
Around the consumer blogs: bank fees, foreclosures, credit cards, free offers...
Anyone interested in consumer protection should check out some of the other consumer blogs, written by advocates, professors and reporters. Here are a few important items:
BANK FEES: Over at his Red Tape Chronicles' blog, MS-NBC's Bob Sullivan has a 221-comments (and counting) entry Banks flout federal law on fees, GAO says. He generously includes a number of my quotes concerning the GAO report. Its secret-shopper methodology and its findings -- that banks aren't disclosing fees as they are required to do by law, so consumers cannot shop around -- were based on (see the footnotes) and identical to those of a series of PIRG Big Banks, Bigger Fees reports (my previous blog). Bob's got a new book Gotcha Capitalism on the "gotcha-fee" business model that serves firms well, and ambushes consumers.
CREDIT CARDS: Over at Credit Slips blog, professor Adam Levitin gives his view on Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-NY) new PIRG-backed legislation in his entry: Credit The Cardholders Bill of Rights. [continued]
His fellow blogger, professor Katie Porter, has an entry Payment cards continue global growth. Both professors, joined by their fellow blogger and credit expert, professor Elizabeth Warren, along with several consumer victims of credit card tricks and traps, will testify before Maloney's committee Thursday. I understand that the banks have refused to testify.
BANKRUPTCY, MORTGAGES AND THE BIBLE: Fellow Credit Slips blogger and professor Bob Lawless hooks us up with a new blog Less Than the Least by two evangelical Christian law professors. In his entry The Subprime Mess, professor David Skeel explains how PIRG-backed legislation on mortgage bankruptcy relief by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) generally comports with Biblical teachings: [The legislation would] allow bankruptcy judges to let a borrower who files for bankruptcy reduce her mortgage to the value of the property if the property is now worth less than the mortgage. (Under current law, mortgages are sacrosanct, a tribute to the influence of the financial services industry). I believe that the bankruptcy approach should be attractive to my fellow evangelicals, despite many evangelicals' discomfort with generous bankruptcy laws. Although traditional usury regulation is justly unpopular, the importance of fair lending-- of a fair price and concern for the borrower's wellbeing-- is a pervasive theme in the Bible. (Exodus 22:26, for instance, instructs a lender who has taken a borrower's coat in pledge to give it back by sunset). I have quibbles with some of the details of the Durbin proposal, and I share many evangelicals' concern that borrowers be encouraged to repay what they owe if they can, but the Durbin proposal sure looks like the best of the current options.
FREE OFFERS: Meanwhile, over at the Consumer Law and Policy blog, Professor Jeff Sovern comments on a professor David Adam Friedman Article on Free Offers . I've previously blogged on the problem of "free to pay" or "pre-acquired account telemarketing" cases (Netflix and Experian) where the free offer problem is magnified because the firm already has your credit card or checking account information. This link to the Friedman article -- Free Offers: A New Look -- which is pending in the New Mexico Law Review, is from the the SSRN server, which is an excellent resources for thousands of open-source (free) working papers and final scholarly articles on important public policy issues.
INTERNET FREE SPEECH: Also at Consumer Law and Policy blog, public interest attorney Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen (the blog host), has a post ISP's Standing Up for Their Customers -- or Not on one of the latest battles over Internet free speech and anonymity. In the previous post, Victory in Wikileaks Case!, his colleague Deepak Gupta reports on Paul's court victory in a different case in which a California federal judge who had previously issued an order shutting down a website for leaked documents exposing corporate and governmental misconduct reversed himself and decided to lift the injunction. As Deepak says: "Needless to say, this is a big victory for Internet free speech."
INTERNET TRACKING OF CONSUMERS: Over at his Digital Destiny blog, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy reports on the latest on behavioural targeting on the web, "including online targeting of medical-related products & services. There will be a flood of personalized pitches from the Big Pharma brands, health remedies, and over-the counter remedies."
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at March 8, 2008 05:05 PM
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