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Nick Slade

Consumer Complaints in 2008: the Top 10

September 1, 2009

The National Associaion of Attorneys General released their list of the top 10 sources of consumer complaints for 2008, and the winner is: debt collectors!
No surprise there, after all, what other profession has been the bane of the poor since before Christ? Evil enough that Shakespeare took time to write about one in Venice.
Second place, [...]

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Bankruptcy: The Best Argument For a Public Option

August 21, 2009

A recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine (PDF) reviewing personal bankruptcies found that medical bills contributed to 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007; 92% of these debtors had medical debts over $5,000. The rest met criteria for bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness, or mortgaged a home to [...]

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Consumer Complaints Up, But Resources Are Down

August 5, 2009

The latest survey of front-line consumer agencies shows that while complaints went up, the resources to help consumers went down. 62% of the agencies reported that they received more complaints in 2008 than in 2007, and 47% of the agencies suffered budget cuts just prior to or during the survey period, with one being eliminated [...]

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Arbitration reform cannot come soon enough

June 16, 2009

In case you missed it, NPR has a really great story on why we need arbitration reform.
The piece starts out with the story of Jamie Leigh Jones a 20-year-old Halliburton/KBR employee in 2005, who was in Iraq for only four days before she was brutally gang raped by fellow employees. No criminal action was ever [...]

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Payday lenders are corporate loan sharks

April 29, 2009

A big part of the payday lending story that somehow does not get much play is the comparison to the loan sharks of the past and the historical animosity towards usury. The Salt Lake Tribune has a good story of the dangers of predatory lending, but even better is that it brings up these points. [...]

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Bank fees, hitting you when you are down

February 27, 2009

As the government moves to issuing debit cards rather than actual checks in an attempt to save money, banks are adding every conceivable fee to get some of those benefits. Even fees just to get the money. Ever see a free ATM? Call customer service, that’ll be 50 cents. How about overdraft fees of up [...]

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Produce the note!

February 26, 2009

Sometimes the court system actually works. The AP has an interesting article on homeowners who are forcing lenders to <gasp> produce the note—the proof the lender issued a mortgage. Apparently some people are having some success in delaying or stopping foreclosure by simply asking whomever is trying to foreclose to produce the original mortgage note. [...]

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Airbag fraud (Auto Fraud Week)

February 13, 2009

Failure to replace airbags in rebuilt cars is real and very deadly problem. NPR has a great article on airbag fraud. According to NPR, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reviewed 1,446 fatal crashes and found that in 255 of those cases, the air bags had not been replaced after a previous accident. Unknown is [...]

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Get your car history from your Uncle Sam? (Auto Fraud Week)

February 13, 2009

Hopefully in the not-too-distant future you will be able to get all the same information that Carfax sells you for $2.50 from Uncle Sam. I say hopefully because there are a number of forces conspiring to prevent it.
The Anti-Car Theft Act (the Act) of 1992 directed the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish [...]

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Buying a car on credit (Auto Fraud Week)

February 11, 2009

For starters, if you are going to buy a car on credit, the best way to start is to go to a credit union and “pre-qualify” for a car loan. In other words, find out what you will be able to afford from someone who is not trying to sell you a car. When you [...]

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Do you really need to buy a car? (Auto Fraud Week)

February 10, 2009

Before you buy a new or newer car, carefully consider your current car. Does buying a new or newer car now make sense, or should you just fix the old one? Generally, it is much cheaper to keep driving the old one.
If you bought the car on credit and have had the car less than [...]

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Carfax: know its limits (Auto Fraud Week)

February 9, 2009

Every time I hear a Cafax ad, it makes me want to scream. Carfax will not give you the “real history” of a car. What a Carfax report gives you is the reported history. There can be a big difference. What Carfax does is collect information reported to the various states’ motor vehicle departments. But [...]

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Gift card dangers

December 10, 2008

With the holidays coming up, I am sure many will be buying a gift card or two, or at least thinking about it. But, just a reminder about the hazards and pit falls of gift cards. The FTC has some great tips on gift cards, which you can find after the jump.
But this year, pay [...]

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Check cashing, payday lending, and the rise of the alternative banking industry

November 18, 2008

I just read the NYT Magazine article Check Cashers, Redeemed on the rise of the alternate financial industry and would highly recommend it.
The article looks at the recent rise of alternative banking through Nix Check Cashing, which is now owned by Kinecta Federal Credit Union. It is interesting because Kinecta is trying to integrate Nix [...]

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November 5, 2008

“The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday alerted the public to instances of questionable solicitations directed at consumers. These solicitations promise consumers access to personal loans through a nonexistent Federal Reserve lending program.” The Fed does not make loans, folks. Press Release, November 4, 2008 | The Federal Reserve

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October 17, 2008

CBS’ 60 Minutes has a great look at the mortgage mess

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Supreme Court cases I disagree with, part 1

October 2, 2008

With all the stuff about Palin’s inability to come up with any Supreme Court cases that she disagrees with other than Roe v. Wade (though she agreed with its central premise that a right to privacy exists in the Constitution), I started thinking about a few that I don’t agree with or am at least [...]

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Foreclosure: preying on the vulnerable

September 30, 2008

The StarTribune did a good piece on two vunerable adults who were preyed upon by unscrupulous mortgage brokers and lenders. While this article is about two people who were legally classified as vunerable adults, the reality is that when it comes to understanding personal finance, especially the more complex issues involved in subprime loans, many [...]

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Tort reform: the 10-minute video

September 30, 2008

Kia Franklin over at TortDeform found this great clip of Mark Wahlstrom and Jan Schlichtmann discussing “Tort Reform” and debunking a number of the myths of tort reform. It includes a challenge from Mark Wahlstrom to his fellow conservatives to stop and look at what is really going on in tort reform and what [...]

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Community Reinvestment Act not the cause of the foreclosure mess

September 26, 2008

One of the great shibboleths of the Republicans is that the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks that receive FDIC guarantees must actually address the credit needs of the communities they are chartered to serve, is the cause of our great foreclosure mess. The line goes that in order to comply with the CRA, those [...]

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