Press Releases

Missourians hope to vote in November on a proposal to limit the interest rate on payday, car title, and installment loans. If successful, Missouri will be the fourth state in four years to approve a reduction of interest rates on payday loans from 400% annual interest to 36% or less. The other states include Montana, Arizona, and Ohio, and in...

Car dealers often target consumers with poor or no credit for yo-yo scams, a new CRL report demonstrates. "Yo-yo scams occur when a dealer leads a car buyer to believe financing is final," says CRL senior researcher Delvin Davis, author of the report, Deal or No Deal: How Yo-Yo Scams Rig the Game against Car Buyers. "The dealer lures the...

Two hundred and fifty national, state and local organizations and individual advocates have asked bank regulators to stop banks from making predatory payday loans, which carry triple-digit annual interest rates of as much as 400 percent. On Wednesday, a New York consumer group presented a letter signed jointly by the groups to Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection...

"The foreclosure settlement announced today will help build a stronger housing market while keeping more people in their homes. But while a significant step toward fixing the foreclosure crisis, this settlement was never intended or able to provide a comprehensive remedy. Much more work is required. Despite its limitations, the settlement requires real reforms in the mortgage servicing industry to...

Dear Wall Street Journal: Your editorial, "Bashing Payday Lenders; Obama targets another industry that serves low-income Americans," is wrong on every point. Payday lending doesn't help low-income families; it traps them in a cycle of debt leaving them worse off. Imagine paying $90 dollars in interest each month if you carried a $300 credit card balance that you couldn't afford...

Washington, D.C. --- Based on what we've heard, the settlement between major banks and states' Attorneys General (AGs), the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Justice would represent an important step forward in addressing foreclosure abuses. The settlement would include key reforms to clean up unfair mortgage servicing practices. It would also provide an important...

As federal regulators consider setting down-payment standards on new mortgages, a new study shows such rules could push 60 percent of creditworthy borrowers into high-cost loans or out of the market altogether. A proposal by regulators to define a high-quality mortgage as one with at least a 20 percent down payment, or possibly 10 percent, would hobble a healthy segment...

The appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is welcome news. Finally, the agency can run at full speed, policing the financial marketplace to make it fairer and more competitive. Mr. Cordray begins his job with overwhelming public support: by a 5 to 1 margin that cuts across party lines, Americans want Wall Street reform...

North Carolina has been – and I hope will continue to be – a leader in finding effective solutions to predatory lending. Over the past decade, our lawmakers struck an effective balance between strong financial markets and fair consumer protections, enacting laws that are now models for other states and Congress. In the area of housing, North Carolina has often...

Today's Department of Justice fair lending settlement with Countrywide Financial is welcome news in a housing market still reeling from the costs of rampant predatory lending. Countrywide was the largest of the rogue mortgage lenders that caused the current crisis. Regulators' lax lending rules and loose oversight allowed these bad practices to flourish. The DOJ settlement deals exclusively with Countrywide...