News

2018

June

21

• For a day, I was one of the millions of Americans without a bank account. I was participating in a sort of financial scavenger hunt that aims to replicate how life works for the millions of Americans — about a quarter of all households — who either don’t have bank…

• How a few people took Equifax to court over Its data breach and won. Christina Bernstein’s check finally arrived last week: $7,440 from Equifax for her trouble. She was one of more than 145 million Americans whose financial information was exposed in the company’s huge data breach last year.…

• Is there a smarter path to artificial intelligence?. For the past five years, the hottest thing in artificial intelligence has been a branch known as deep learning. The grandly named statistical technique, put simply, gives computers a way to learn by processing vast…

• White House to propose merging Labor and Education into one agency. The White House will propose merging the Education and Labor departments into one federal agency, the centerpiece of a plan to remake a bureaucracy that President Trump and his supporters consider too big and bloated.…

20

• Consumer watchdog agency needs to get back to doing its job. Recently, the president nominated a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director: Kathy Kraninger, an ally of the current acting director who has no previous consumer protection experience. The nomination announcement clarifies the essential role of the…

• Warren announces hold on Trump’s CFPB nomination, citing border policy. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said yesterday that she will put a hold on the nomination of Kathy Kraninger to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until Kraninger turns over all documents about any role…

• Tips for getting a great mortgage—and surviving the process. To guide the homebuying process, Ruth Susswein of the nonprofit Consumer Action suggests consulting CFPB’s online mortgage guide. Its checklists, terms, estimation tools and explanations of the mortgage process are easy to understand and up…

• Major cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb halts trading. One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges suspended operations Wednesday after announcing that hackers stole more than $31 million worth of virtual currency, pushing down the value of some top names, including bitcoin.

19

• Can student loans now be discharged in bankruptcy?. It's one of the most intensely-debated student loan questions: Can you discharge your student loans in bankruptcy?

• Pregnancy discrimination is rampant inside America’s biggest companies. Many pregnant women have been systematically sidelined in the workplace. They’re passed over for promotions and raises. They’re fired when they complain.

18

• Trump taps budget aide to head Consumer Bureau. The White House on Saturday said it would nominate Kathy Kraninger, a White House budget official, to serve as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a push to continue scaling back…

• Is the gig economy a myth?. A new survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that, in 2017, the share of workers in “alternative employment arrangements” (gig jobs and other) was 10.1 percent of total employment, almost exactly what it…

• Rebel developers are trying to cure our smartphone addiction. A small but growing number of behavioral scientists and former Silicon Valley developers have begun trying to counterprogram the news alerts, friend requests and updates crowding our waking hours.

• The charts that show how big business is winning. Many small businesses have struggled to keep up with the new corporate giants and with foreign competition. You can probably see a version of the story in your community. The hardware store has given way…

16

• Credit freezes will soon be free for everyone. Starting this fall, the big three credit reporting agencies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — will be required to let you freeze your credit file for free. A freeze can help prevent identity thieves from…

15

• I need a student loan. What are my options?. My daughter received a scholarship, but we still owe the college $15,000 this year. That's more than we can afford to pay. Where do we go for a student loan?—Anonymous

14

• Beware the Nigerian email scam. By this point, savvy people know it’s a bad idea to trust an email from a Nigerian prince hoping to use their bank account to unload a dead relative’s vast wealth.

• The Fed just made life even worse for home buyers. Buyers are facing a competitive market in which they need to move quickly, bid high and make other concessions if they want to land the deal, real estate agents say. And for every month that…

• Bill would protect licenses of those who default on student loans. Senators Marco Rubio and Elizabeth Warren plann to introduce a bill that would prevent states from suspending residents’ driver’s and professional licenses over unpaid federal student loans. Critics have called the practice a self-defeating approach…

• Apple making it harder for police to collect evidence from iPhones. Apple announced that it would block access to a port that law enforcement uses to break into iPhones during criminal investigations, a move that could reignite debate over whether tech companies are doing enough to…