Archive for May, 2008

Prices up, home values down, employment dropping slowly and wages lagging: a consumer nightmare. Consumers being squeezed from two sides | MSNBC

The Minnesota legislature put the Subprime Borrower Relief Act on Governor Pawlenty’s desk last week. The Act would have put Minnesota home foreclosures on hold for a year to give homeowners a chance to sell, refinance, or negotiate a workout plan with their lenders.
It was, in all respects, a reasonable and fair compromise that would [...]

Maybe the tide is starting to change. ABC News’ Good Morning America show’s piece on what a scam mandatory arbitration is for credit cards is great.
Among its highlights are a women who was harassed and sued for some one else’s debt, and a judge who was black balled for deciding in the consumer’s favor once. [...]

ABC News did a great piece on debt collection, arbitration, and especially the National Arbitration Forum, where consumers in California lose 99% of the time. A former NAF arbitrator says on camera that she was forced to quit for ruling in favor of a consumer one time. Stick around for the great commentary at the [...]

National Arbitration Forum basically offers a rubber stamp to debt collectors already, and they argue that courts should turn their awards into court judgments without looking too closely.
Are courts unreasonably tossing out arbitration awards? Nope. NAF is just advocating for its clients, the debt collectors, who have no proof of the debts on which they [...]

The Justice Department and the National Association of Realtors reached a tentative settlement in an antitrust lawsuit. The NAR was seriously hampering the ability of newer, lower-cost realtors to list properties for sale online. As anyone who has recently gone house-shopping knows, you have to go to a traditional broker if you want to see [...]

I recently had the privilege of attending a small conference at UMass/Amherst in honor of progressive financial guru Jane D’Arista. Details about the conference (The Political Economy of Monetary Policy and Financial Regulation) and about its sponsor, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), are available here.
Jane worked for a dozen years as a key [...]

Tracy Warren was a quality-control consultant for Bear Stearns and other mortgage security purchasers on Wall Street. Her job was to review mortgage loans to determine whether they had merit for investment purposes. (She saw the loans after they were made, but before they were sold to investors and led to the national economy’s crash-and-burn [...]

A Monster List of Things Monster Cable Will Soon Sue | Gizmodo

How else could one explain their crusade to sue every other business that uses the word monster anywhere in its name? This includes the Chicago Bears, whose long-time nickname “monsters of the midway” must have been awfully confusing for all those consumers who showed up at Soldier Field looking to by HDMI component cables.
Or in [...]

A judge recently said that (PDF link) Dell “has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive and unlawful business conduct . . . .” The case specifically dealt with Dell’s grandiose promises in its service agreements, on which it did not deliver. Judge: “Dell Has Engaged In Repeated Misleading, Deceptive And Unlawful Business Conduct” | Consumerist

Insurers would love to assess your risk based your genes. That is, if you were high risk for cancer, your insurer would prefer to charge you a higher premium, since there would be a good chance it will be paying for expensive cancer treatment at some point.
Of course, everyone has some genetic predispositions. But many [...]

81% of Americans polled in a recent study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce disapproved of mandatory binding arbitration. This is the corporation-friendly, tie-your-hands arbitration that is written into most of the consumer contracts we sign every day for credit cards, cell phones, etc.
So maybe it is time for Congress to get going and [...]

Some scammers in California were caught telling groups of Spanish-speaking homeowners in foreclosure that they could transfer their homes to the federal government for $10,000. The scammers are in jail, and the police are trying to find the money. Foreclosure scammers busted in San Diego | California Debt Blog

When we talk about the foreclosure problem, we usually focus on the effect on the borrower-owner who had a a loan they could not afford. But where the borrower was a landlord, foreclosure causes a raft of problems for tenants, as well.
A Star Tribune story on a mass eviction in North Minneapolis illustrates this well.

Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison co-sponsors the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, which, contrary to other high-sounding legislative initiatives, actually does what it says. It would prevent ISPs from discriminating against certain internet traffic based on its content, source, etc. (via freepress)

For those of you with a Showtime subscription, be sure to check out the documentary Maxed Out from the comfort of your own living room this Friday at 7pm. Maxed Out had its TV premier on May 12 on Showtime, and will run three more times: Friday May 23 at 7pm, Monday May 26 at [...]

In which a Bloomington auto salesperson asks a customer “What the hell would YOU want with a Jaguar? Really, what are you doing here?”
K2 Auto Group In Minneapolis Uses The “I Hate You, Get Out” Sales Method [Consumerist]

The Subprime Borrower Relief Act gives borrowers with subprime loans the right to defer a foreclosure sale of their residence for one year after the bill becomes law.

Speaking of screwing consumers, California consumer lawyer Jonathan Stein has an instructive story on what happens when corporations and debt collectors try to bully consumers into paying debts—even debts they do not owe.
His client sold a car that was later involved in an auto accident. Because the buyer did not register the title or obtain [...]