Posts Tagged ‘predatory lending’

In case you missed it over Valentine’s Day, Elliot Spitzer, consumer rights hero, wrote a great J’accuse piece in the Washington Post . In the piece, Spitzer rightfully accuses the Bush Administration through the OCC of actually making the predatory lending problem worse by first trying to ignore the problem, then when the States [...]

Here is a short video from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in which he promises to create a ten million dollar fund to help keep people in their homes and a tax deduction for homeowners who do not itemize on their income tax returns.

[via Consumer Rights Watch]

The New York Times has a good piece on the total lack of interest on the part of Washington to listen to the many voices of reason who were warning about the subprime crisis. I think overall though it lets the Feds off too easy, especially Alan Greenspan. The discussion with Greenspan has some interesting [...]

In a new staff study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Donald Morgan and Michael Strain take another look at whether payday loans are predatory or, in Morgan’s terms, welfare enhancing. This time around, Morgan takes a look at the “afermath” when Georgia and North Carolina banned payday lending.
(Dr. Morgan has commented on [...]

“The truth is, our middle-class families are not going to be secure so long as they can’t get out of debt,” Obama said Monday, sharpening the populist rhetoric of his presidential campaign. “If we’re serious about stopping Americans from falling deeper in debt, we’ve got to crack down on predatory credit card companies that are [...]

Consumer attorney Nick Slade has joined the Caveat Emptor blog as a contributing editor. Nick has been taking consumer cases since 2000, when he refocused his practice from criminal defense to consumer law.
Nick deals with a variety of consumer issues, including auto fraud, equity stripping (also called foreclosure rescue scams), predatory lending, the Truth-In-Lending Act, [...]

I will be in Washington, D.C., for the National Consumer Law Center 2007 Conference from tomorrow afternoon through the weekend. If my posting frequency falls off, that’s why. But I will try to keep the posts coming, especially about topics that come up at the conference.

Equity stripping is a type of predatory lending brought on by the housing “boom.” As housing prices skyrocket, many homeowners don’t realize they are living in a goldmine. At the same time, property taxes are skyrocketing, forcing many homeowners into default. Those living on fixed incomes are particularly vulnerable.
This combination means unscrupulous individuals have a [...]