CRL in the News

In what progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups decried as the Trump administration's latest " shameful" attack on vulnerable families, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would gut regulations protecting consumers from predatory payday lenders.

NEW YORK — The nation’s federal financial watchdog said Wednesday that it plans to abolish most of its critical consumer protections governing payday lenders. The move is a major win for the payday lending industry, which argued the government’s regulations could kill off a large chunk of its business. It’s also a big loss for consumer groups, who say payday...

The nation’s new consumer financial watchdog proposed Wednesday to significantly water down tough pending rules on payday and other short-term loans designed to prevent lenders from taking advantage of cash-strapped Americans. The proposal by Kathy Kraninger, who became director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in December after being nominated by President Trump, would eliminate key provisions requiring lenders to...

REFINANCING STUDENT loans can save you money under the right circumstances. It could be helpful to score a lower interest rate, to change from a variable interest rate to a fixed rate, to consolidate your loans for a single monthly payment, or to release a co-signer. At the same time, you could lose protections and benefits from your original student...

Students attending for-profit colleges continue to be less likely to graduate than their counterparts at public institutions, the Center for Responsible Lending says. The center has analyzed government data that show students from for-profit higher education institutions carry more debt regardless of whether they graduate, and they default on that debt at higher rates.

THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU penalized a man $1 this week, for illegally exchanging veterans’ pensions for high-interest “cash advances.” Mark Corbett claimed in sworn statements to the bureau that he had an inability to pay any fine of greater value, and the bureau accepted $1 as payment for making illegal, high-cost loans to former members of the armed forces...

CRL's Scott Astrada discusses how the financial stress of the government shutdown may lead furloughed federal employees to take out high-cost predatory loans to try to make ends meet.

While many struggle to make ends meet during the shutdown, some have turned to small-dollar loans to fill the financial vacuum that comes as a result of the ongoing battle raging more than 1,000 miles away in Washington, NBC News reported. Because of a lack of regulations surrounding loans and the Trump administration rescinding some Obama-era protections, the annual percentage...

American residential neighborhoods remain highly segregated by race, and that is no accident. In fact, it is a result of "a state-sponsored system of segregation" set in motion by New Deal federal housing programs designed to expand but also racially partition the nation's housing stock, said Richard Rothstein, author of the 2017 book The Color of Law, a Forgotten History...

On Thursday morning, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — a man whose extraordinarily shady financial history doesn’t get the attention it deserves — appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk about the government shutdown. He expressed bafflement at the idea of unpaid federal workers suffering financial hardship, wondering why they don’t just take out loans. “There really is not a good...