Press Releases

Ellen Harnick, Senior Policy Counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending contributed this guest post to " The Hearing", a blog of the Washington Post. Over the past decade, federal bank regulators looked the other way as responsible loans were crowded out of the market by aggressively marketed financial products carrying hidden costs and fees. Tricky products, whose most "innovative"...

Payday lenders, in their battle to win legal authority to charge triple-digit interest rates, argue that stating their typical interest rate as 390 percent annually is misleading because their loans are short term. State policy-makers and even voters have specifically rejected this bogus argument but payday lenders are trying to use it again as the U.S. Congress debates how to...

National consumer protection organizations applauded President Obama's proposal to create a new federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency to ensure the safety, fairness and sustainability of credit. The agency would have broad powers to ensure that credit and payment products do not have predatory or deceptive features that can harm consumers or lock them into unaffordable loans. "The international economic crisis...

"We commend the Administration for its innovative plan for protecting America's families from abusive lending practices, including those that led to the current mortgage crisis, as well as those involving costly overdraft bank fees and other small loans. As our country grapples with the current financial meltdown and its epidemic of foreclosures that have crippled the economy, we must address...

Religious, civil rights and consumer groups today briefed congressional lawmakers and staff on why all families should be covered by the 36 percent rate cap on consumer loans that already protects military families. Over 70 percent of Americans support a cap of 36 percent or less. "The issue of payday loans is an economic justice issue, and it is a...

Consumers have the deck stacked against them when they are forced into mandatory arbitration by their credit card issuer or other financial services provider, an analysis by the Center for Responsible Lending confirms. Many consumers don't even know that the contracts they sign for most credit cards, auto loans and other small loan products come with hidden clauses that require...

A dismal milestone was reached over the weekend: One million new foreclosures have been filed so far in 2009, according to estimates by the Center for Responsible Lending. This comes on the heels of a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, the first quarter 2009 National Delinquency Survey, showing that 12% of all mortgages are now delinquent—the highest level...

We applaud President Obama and congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for their leadership in swiftly enacting new law to clean up abusive credit card industry practices. The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in Congress to pass the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights was a vote on the side of hardworking American families. Today, with the President's signing the bill...

We applaud President Obama for reaffirming the important role of state law in protecting consumers. To that end, we call on federal banking regulators to withdraw their misguided and harmful preemption policy so that state regulators can once again protect their residents from unfair and deceptive financial products. We needn't look further than the current mortgage meltdown for evidence that...

"We commend the leadership of Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby, the Senate Banking Committee and the Senators whose votes ensured passage of H.R. 627, the Credit CARD Act. This bill, which received overwhelming bipartisan support, will provide consumers with significant protections from industry practices that extract billions of dollars in unfair fees and interest from cardholders every year. "We applaud...