News

2018

April

21

• With its tax cut, Wells could pay $1 billion fine 3 times and still have cash. Federal regulators on Friday hit Wells Fargo with a $1 billion fine, the largest levied against a U.S. bank during the Trump administration. But the civil penalty is unlikely to hobble or even slow down…

• Blacks still face a red line on housing. For generations of white American families, homeownership has been a fundamental means of accumulating wealth. Their homes have grown in value over time, providing security in retirement and serving as an asset against which they…

20

• Amazon defined by billions--workers' median pay is $28,446. The big numerical reveal Wednesday was Amazon.com Inc. finally spilling the beans on the number of Prime members (more than 100 million). Amazon also disclosed another number that shows how much it relies on an…

19

• The ‘C’ in CRA should still mean something. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was put into place to address the refusal of banks to lend to and meet the financial needs of low- and middle-income communities. Crucially, CRA brings together communities that have…

• SEC seeks to require brokers to put their clients first. In a long-expected move that would affect the roughly 43 million households with brokerage or retirement accounts, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to propose rules that would require brokers to put their customers’ financial…

• Payday lenders convening at Trump resort are met by protesters. At Trump National Doral Golf Club near Miami this week, executives with the nation's payday loan industry are holding their annual conference.  Outside the gates of the resort, a smaller group gathered to hold a…

18

• A flaw-by-flaw guide to Facebook’s new GDPR privacy changes. Facebook is about to start pushing European users to speed through giving consent for its new GDPR privacy law compliance changes. It will ask people to review how Facebook applies data from web to target…

• Now's a very, very good time to look at the IRS calculator for 2018. Before you forget about federal taxes for a while, it's worth visiting the IRS 2018 Withholding Calculator. Your taxes are likely to be very different next year. It's better to check now than wait for a…

• Senate poised to roll back watchdog effort to prevent discrimination. The Senate is poised to vote this week to rescind a five-year old Obama-era policy warning auto lenders against allowing minority borrowers to be charged more than their white peers. The fight centers on guidance issued by CFPB…

• Here's why you're having so much trouble finding a home to buy. Low inventory and high demand have also caused home prices to increase by more than 5 percent every year for the past six years, which is great news for homeowners but frustrating for buyers. Finding…

• First-ever evictions database shows: 'We're In a housing crisis'. For many poor families in America, eviction is a real and ongoing threat. Sociologist Matthew Desmond estimates that 2.3 million evictions were filed in the U.S. in 2016 — a rate of four every minute.…

17

• Teach kids to be smart consumers. Most financial literacy efforts in schools don’t improve people’s behavior later in life. That could be because we’re focusing on the wrong things. Trying to teach teenagers how to shop for a mortgage, for example,…

• Asians love digital banking, Americans not so much. If you want to see what your relationship with your bank will look like in a few years, look to the East. Consumers in Asia are rapidly using mobile banking for more services, making visits…

16

• Massachusetts defies aministration with crackdown on student loan debt. The Massachusetts Senate passed a bill that would require student loan companies to be licensed.

• Who is a public servant? Borrowers have a lot riding on the answer. If you had the right kind of loan from the government, were in an eligible repayment plan and made 120 on-time payments by 2017 or later, your student loan debt could then disappear, as long…

• Can consumers still get help from the CFPB?. Change has come swiftly to the agency, but for now important consumer tools remain in place.

• Thinking about getting an advance on your tax refund?. Tax-refund advance loans can come with some hidden fees.

13

• Federal judges indicate they could remove Mulvaney as acting CFPB chief. Judges on a federal appeals court panel Thursday appeared hesitant to overrule President Trump and install the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the agency's temporary leader.

12

• Mulvaney leading Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over a cliff. Accounts of the slow death of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are not exaggerations. In his just released report to Congress, the agency’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney, was clear about his mission. “The bureau is…

• I downloaded the information Facebook has on me. Yikes.. There was so much that Facebook knew about me — more than I wanted to know. But after looking at the totality of what the Silicon Valley company had obtained about yours truly, I decided…