Archives For consumer financial protection bureau

Congressional Review Act Should Be Used to Strike Down Ill-Advised CFPB Arbitration Rule

Alden Abbott —  12 July 2017

On July 10, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a new rule to ban financial service providers, such as banks or credit card companies, from using mandatory arbitration clauses to deny consumers the opportunity to participate in a class action (“Arbitration Rule”).  The Arbitration Rule’s summary explains:

First, the final rule prohibits covered providers of certain consumer financial products and services from using an agreement with a consumer that provides for arbitration of any future dispute between the parties to bar the consumer from filing or participating in a class action concerning the covered consumer financial product or service. Second, the final rule requires covered providers that are involved in an arbitration pursuant to a pre-dispute arbitration agreement to submit specified arbitral records to the Bureau and also to submit specified court records. The Bureau is also adopting official interpretations to the regulation.

The Arbitration Rule’s effective date is 60 days following its publication in the Federal Register (which is imminent), and it applies to contracts entered into more than 180 days after that.

Cutting through the hyperbole that the Arbitration Rule protects consumers from “unfairness” that would deny them “their day in court,” this Rule is in fact highly anti-consumer and harmful to innovation.  As Competitive Enterprise Senior Fellow John Berlau put it, in promulgating this Rule, “[t]he CFPB has disregarded vast data showing that arbitration more often compensates consumers for damages faster and grants them larger awards than do class action lawsuits. This regulation could have particularly harmful effects on FinTech innovations, such as peer-to-peer lending.”  Moreover, in a coauthored paper, Professors Jason Johnston of the University of Virginia Law School and Todd Zywicki of the Scalia Law School debunked a CFPB study that sought to justify the agency’s plans to issue the Arbitration Rule.  They concluded:

The CFPB’s [own] findings show that arbitration is relatively fair and successful at resolving a range of disputes between consumers and providers of consumer financial products, and that regulatory efforts to limit the use of arbitration will likely leave consumers worse off . . . .  Moreover, owing to flaws in the report’s design and a lack of information, the report should not be used as the basis for any legislative or regulatory proposal to limit the use of consumer arbitration.    

Unfortunately, the Arbitration Rule is just the latest of many costly regulatory outrages perpetrated by the CFPB, an unaccountable bureaucracy that offends the Constitution’s separation of powers and should be eliminated by Congress, as I explained in a 2016 Heritage Foundation report.

Legislative elimination of an agency, however, takes time.  Fortunately, in the near term, Congress can apply the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to prevent the Arbitration Rule from taking effect, and to block the CFPB from passing rules similar to it in the future.

As Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Paul Larkin has explained:

[The CRA is] Congress’s most recent effort to trim the excesses of the modern administrative state.  The act requires the executive branch to report every “rule” — a term that includes not only the regulations an agency promulgates, but also its interpretations of the agency’s governing laws — to the Senate and House of Representatives so that each chamber can schedule an up-or-down vote on the rule under the statute’s fast-track procedure.  The act was designed to enable Congress expeditiously to overturn agency regulations by avoiding the delays occasioned by the Senate’s filibuster rules and practices while also satisfying the [U.S. Constitution’s] Article I Bicameralism and Presentment requirements, which force the Congress and President to collaborate to enact, revise, or repeal a law.  Under the CRA, a joint resolution of disapproval signed into law by the President invalidates the rule and bars an agency from thereafter adopting any substantially similar rule absent a new act of Congress.

Although the CRA was almost never invoked before 2017, in recent months it has been used extensively as a tool by Congress and the Trump Administration to roll back specific manifestations Obama Administration regulatory overreach (for example, see here and here).

Application of the CRA to expunge the Arbitration Rule (and any future variations on it) would benefit consumers, financial services innovation, and the overall economy.  Senator Tom Cotton has already gotten the ball rolling to repeal that Rule.  Let us hope that Congress follows his lead and acts promptly.

In Constitutional Law, Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, Regulation, Regulatory Reform, Truth on the Market , , ,
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Why the Federal Trade Commission (not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Should Oversee Consumer Protection in Financial Markets

Alden Abbott —  8 March 2017

On February 28, the Heritage Foundation released Prosperity Unleashed:  Smarter Financial Regulation, a Report that lays bare the heavy and unnecessary burdens imposed on our economy by defective financial regulations, and proposed market-oriented regulatory reforms that would benefit American producers, consumers, and the overall economy.  In a recent Truth on the Market blog commentary, I summarized the key findings and recommendations set forth in the Report’s 23 chapters.  In this commentary, I explore in greater detail chapter 19 of the Report, “How Congress Should Protect Consumers’ Finances,” co-authored by George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law Todd J. Zywicki and me.

Chapter 19 makes the case for legislative reform that would eliminate the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight of consumer protection in financial markets and transfer such authority to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (key excerpts with footnote references omitted follow):

Free-market competition is key to the efficient provision of the goods and services that consumers desire. More generally, the free market promotes innovation and overall economic welfare. Imperfect information can, however, limit the ability of competition to be effective in benefiting consumers and the economy. In particular, inaccurate information about the quality and attributes of market offerings may lead consumers to make mistaken purchase decisions—in other words, consumers may not get what they think they bargained for. This will lead to the distrust of market processes, as sellers find it harder to differentiate themselves from their competition. The end result is less-effective competition, less consumer satisfaction, and lower economic welfare.

Fraudulent or deceptive statements regarding product or service attributes, and negative features of products or services that become evident only after sale, are prime examples of inaccurate information that undermines trust in competitive firms. Accordingly, the government has a legitimate role in seeking to curb fraud, deception, and related informational problems. Historically, the federal government’s primary consumer protection agency, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has taken the lead in bringing enforcement actions against businesses that distort markets by engaging in “deceptive” or “unfair” practices when marketing their offerings to consumers. In recent decades, the FTC has taken an economics-focused approach in these areas. Specifically, it has limited “deception prosecutions” to cases where consumers acting reasonably were misled and tangibly harmed, and “unfairness prosecutions” to situations involving consumer injury not outweighed by countervailing benefits (a cost-benefit approach). In other words, although the FTC may have erred from time to time in specific cases, its general approach has avoided government overreach and has been conducive to enhancing marketplace efficiency and consumer welfare.

However, Congress has not allowed the FTC to exercise economy-wide oversight over consumer protection, in general, and fraud and deception, in particular. For many years, a hodgepodge of different federal financial service regulators were empowered to regulate the practices of a wide variety of financial industry entities, with the FTC only empowered to oversee consumer financial protection with respect to the narrow category of “non-bank financial institutions.” As part of the 2010 Dodd–Frank financial reform legislation, Congress created a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), loosely tied to the Federal Reserve Board. While Dodd–Frank mandated shared CFPB–FTC consumer protection jurisdiction over non-bank financial institutions, it transferred all other authority over the many separate consumer financial protection laws to the CFPB alone. The CFPB is simultaneously one of the most powerful and least-accountable regulatory bodies in United States history. In marked contrast to the FTC’s economics-based approach, the CFPB intervenes in financial market consumer-related practices in a heavy-handed arbitrary fashion that ignores sound economics. The upshot is that far from improving market efficiency, the CFPB reduces market efficiency, to the detriment of consumers, producers, and the overall economy. In short, the CFPB’s actions are a prime example of government failure.

The substantive powers of the CFPB are vast and ill-defined. The CFPB has power to regulate the terms and marketing of every consumer credit product in the economy. And, because many small businesses use personal credit to start and grow their businesses (such as personal credit cards, home equity lines of credit, and even products like auto title loans), the CFPB possesses substantial control over much of the allocation of small-business credit as well. The CFPB has the power to take enforcement and regulatory action against “unfair, deceptive, and abusive” consumer credit terms, an authority that the CFPB has exercised with gusto. Moreover, the CFPB has deliberately eschewed regulatory rule-making that would clarify these terms, preferring to engage in case-by-case enforcement actions that undermine predictability and chill vigorous competition and innovation. Yet despite the broad authority granted to the CFPB, its appetite is broader still: The CFPB has taken action to regulate products such as cellphone billing, for-profit career colleges, and even loans made by auto dealers (despite express jurisdictional limits in Dodd–Frank regarding the latter).

The consequences of this unchecked authority have been disastrous for consumers and the economy. Complicated rules with high compliance costs have choked off access to mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products. Overwhelmed by the costs and uncertainty of regulatory compliance, small banks have exited traditional lines of business, such as home mortgages, and feared entering new lines, such as small-dollar loans. Consistent with the general effects of Dodd–Frank, the CFPB has contributed to the consolidation of the American financial sector, making big banks bigger, and forcing consolidation of small banks. By imposing one-size-fits-all bureaucratic underwriting standards on community banks and credit unions, the CFPB has deprived these actors of their traditional model of relationship lending and intimate knowledge of their customers—their lone competitive advantage over megabanks.

Perhaps the most tragic element of the CFPB train wreck is the missed opportunity for reform that it represents. At the time of Dodd–Frank, the system of consumer financial protection was badly in need of modernization: The existing system was cumbersome, incoherent, and ineffective. Fragmented among multiple federal agencies with authority over different providers of financial services, the federal system lacked the ability to lay down a coherent regulatory regime that would promote competition, consumer choice, and consumer protection consistent with the realities of a 21st-century economy and technology. While there is little evidence that the financial crisis resulted from a breakdown of consumer financial protection (as opposed to safety and soundness issues), reform was timely. But Dodd–Frank squandered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring about real reform.

In this chapter, we briefly make the case that some degree of reform of the consumer financial protection system was appropriate, in particular, the consolidation of consumer financial protection in one federal agency. However, we challenge the apparatus constructed by Dodd–Frank that created a new unaccountable super-regulator with a tunnel vision focus on a narrow definition of “consumer protection.” Instead, we argue that existing substantive powers were largely sufficient to the task of consumer protection, and that Congress could have achieved better results by acting within the existing institutional framework by simply consolidating authority in the FTC. By working within the existing framework of long-standing substantive authorities and institutional arrangements, Congress could have provided the needed modernization of the federal consumer financial protection system without the unintended consequences that have resulted from the creation of the CFPB. . . .

Consolidating the powers granted to the CFPB in the FTC, which still retains certain regulatory responsibilities with respect to consumer finance, would have a number of advantages over the course chosen in Dodd–Frank.

First, the FTC is a multimember, bipartisan commission. This is an important improvement over the structure of the CFPB, which [is led by a single unaccountable director and] is neither an independent commission nor an executive agency. . . . 

[Second,] [t]he FTC [,unlike the CFPB,] is . . . subject to Congress’s appropriations process, an important check on the agency’s actions. . . .

Finally, the FTC has a large Bureau of Economics, staffed with academically trained economists who would be ideally suited to take into account the regulatory economic policy issues, discussed herein, to which the CFPB has paid no heed. This would make it far more likely that agency regulatory decisions affecting consumer credit markets would be taken in light of the effects of agency actions on consumer welfare and the broader economy. . . .

[In conclusion,] [e]liminating the CFPB’s authority over consumer protection in financial services, and transferring such authority to the FTC, would greatly improve the current sorry state of affairs. Admittedly, the FTC is a less-than-perfect agency, and even a multimember-commission structure does not prevent institutional mistakes from being made and repeated by the majority. All in all, however, as an accountable institution, the FTC is far superior to the CFPB. Consolidating this authority with the FTC—where it should have been in the first place—will better allow free markets to promote innovation and overall economic welfare. Strengthening this legal framework to provide a single, clearly defined, properly limited set of rules will facilitate competition among financial firms, thus protecting consumers and providing them with better choices.

In Credit Cards, Federal Trade Commission, Financial Regulation, Regulation, Regulatory Reform , , , ,
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Time to Repeal the FTC’s Common Carrier Jurisdictional Exemption (Among Other Things)?

Alden Abbott —  19 September 2016

Section 5(a)(2) of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act authorizes the FTC to “prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, except . . . common carriers subject to the Acts to regulate commerce . . . from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”  On August 29, in FTC v. AT&T, the Ninth Circuit issued a decision that exempts non-common carrier data services from U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jurisdiction, merely because they are offered by a company that has common carrier status.  This case involved an FTC allegation that AT&T had “throttled” data (slowed down Internet service) for “unlimited mobile data” customers without adequate consent or disclosures, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act.  The FTC had claimed that although AT&T mobile wireless voice services were a common carrier service, the company’s mobile wireless data services were not, and, thus, were subject to FTC oversight.  Reversing a federal district court’s refusal to grant AT&T’s motion to dismiss, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “when Congress used the term ‘common carrier’ in the FTC Act, [there is no indication] it could only have meant ‘common carrier to the extent engaged in common carrier activity.’”  The Ninth Circuit therefore determined that “a literal reading of the words Congress selected simply does comport with [the FTC’s] activity-based approach.”  The FTC’s pending case against AT&T in the Northern District of California (which is within the Ninth Circuit) regarding alleged unfair and deceptive advertising of satellite services by AT&T subsidiary DIRECTTV (see here) could be affected by this decision.

The Ninth Circuit’s AT&T holding threatens to further extend the FCC’s jurisdictional reach at the expense of the FTC.  It comes on the heels of the divided D.C. Circuit’s benighted and ill-reasoned decision (see here) upholding the FCC’s “Open Internet Order,” including its decision to reclassify Internet broadband service as a common carrier service.  That decision subjects broadband service to heavy-handed and costly FCC “consumer protection” regulation, including in the area of privacy.  The FCC’s overly intrusive approach stands in marked contrast to the economic efficiency considerations (albeit not always perfectly applied) that underlie FTC consumer protection mode of analysis.  As I explained in a May 2015 Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum,  the FTC’s highly structured, analytic, fact-based methodology, combined with its vast experience in privacy and data security investigations, make it a far better candidate than the FCC to address competition and consumer protection problems in the area of broadband.

I argued in this space in March 2016 that, should the D.C. Circuit uphold the FCC’s Open Internet Order, Congress should carefully consider whether to strip the FCC of regulatory authority in this area (including, of course, privacy practices) and reassign it to the FTC.  The D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding that Order, combined with the Ninth Circuit’s latest ruling, makes the case for potential action by the next Congress even more urgent.

While it is at it, the next Congress should also weigh whether to repeal the FTC’s common carrier exemption, as well as all special exemptions for specified categories of institutions, such as banks, savings and loans, and federal credit unions (see here).  In so doing, Congress might also do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an unaccountable bureaucracy whose consumer protection regulatory responsibilities should cease (see my February 2016 Heritage Legal Memorandum here).

Finally, as Heritage Foundation scholars have urged, Congress should look into enacting additional regulatory reform legislation, such as requiring congressional approval of new major regulations issued by agencies (including financial services regulators) and subjecting “independent” agencies (including the FCC) to executive branch regulatory review.

That’s enough for now.  Stay tuned.

In Antitrust & Competition, Broadband, Corporate & Securities Law, Exemptions, Federal Trade Commission, Regulation, Regulatory Reform, Section 5, Telecommunications, Wireless , , , , , , ,
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The Constitutionally-Challenged Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Now Directly Challenges the Lawful and Welfare-Enhancing Pay-Day Lending Industry

Alden Abbott —  6 June 2016

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is, to say the least, a controversial agency.  As documented by such experts as Scalia Law School Professor Todd Zywicki, the CFPB imposes enormous costs on consumers and financial service providers through costly and unwarranted command-and-control regulation.  Furthermore, as I explained in a February 2016 Heritage Foundation legal memorandum, the CFPB’s exemption from the oversight constraints that apply to other federal agencies offends the separation of powers and thus raises serious constitutional problems.  (Indeed, a federal district court in the District of Columbia is currently entertaining a challenge to the Bureau’s constitutionality.)

Given its freedom from normal constitutionally-mandated supervision, the CFPB’s willingness to take sweeping and arguably arbitrary actions is perhaps not surprising.  Nevertheless, even by its own standards, the Bureau’s latest initiative is particularly egregious.  Specifically, on June 2, 2016, the CFPB issued a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans” (CFPB NPRM) setting forth a set of requirements that would effectively put “payday loan” companies out of business.  (The U.S. Government has already unjustifiably harmed payday lenders through “Operation Choke Point,” pursuant to which federal bank regulators, in particular the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), have sought to deny those lenders access to banking services.  A Heritage Foundation overview of Operation Choke Point and a call for its elimination may be found here; the harm the FDIC has imposed on payday lenders is detailed here.)

The CFPB defines a “payday loan” as “a short-term loan, generally for $500 or less, that is typically due on your next payday. . . .  [The borrower] must give lenders access to . . . [his or her] checking account or write a check for the full balance in advance that the lender has an option of depositing when the loan comes due.”  Moreover, payday loans are often structured to be paid off in one lump-sum payment, but interest-only payments – “renewals” or “rollovers” – are not unusual. In some cases, payday loans may be structured so that they are repayable in installments over a longer period of time.”

Despite their unusual character, economic analysis reveals that payday loans efficiently serve the needs of a certain class of borrower and that welfare is reduced if government seeks to sharply limit them.  In a 2009 study, Professor Zywicki summarized key research findings:

Economic research strongly supports two basic conclusions about payday lending:  First, those who use payday lending do so because they have to, not because they want to.  They use payday lending to deal with short-term exigencies and a lack of access to payday loans would likely cause them substantial cost and personal difficulty, such as bounced checks, disconnected utilities, or lack of funds for emergencies such as medical expenses or car repairs. Those who use payday loans have limited alternative sources of credit, such as pawn shops, bank overdraft protection, credit card cash advances (where available), and informal lenders. Although expensive, payday loans are less expensive than available alternatives. Misguided paternalistic regulation that deprives consumers of access to payday loans would likely force many of them to turn to even more expensive lenders or to do without emergency funds. Although payday loans may lead some consumers to be trapped in a “debt trap” of repeated revolving debt, this concern is not unique to payday lending. Moreover, evidence indicates that those who are led into a debt trap by payday lending are far fewer in number than those who are benefited by access to payday loans.

Second, efforts by legislators to regulate the terms of small consumer loans (such as by imposing price caps on fees or limitations on repeated use “rollovers”) almost invariably produce negative unintended consequences that vastly exceed any social benefits gained from the legislation. Moreover, prior studies of price caps on lending have found that low-income and minority borrowers are most negatively affected by the regulations and the adjustments that they produce. Volumes of economic theory and empirical analysis indicate that further restrictions on payday lending likely would prove counterproductive and harmful to the very people such restrictions would be intended to help.

Unfortunately, the CFPB seems to be oblivious to these findings on payday lending, as demonstrated by key language of the CFPB NPRM:

[T]he [CFPB’s] proposal would identify it as an abusive and unfair practice for a lender to make a covered loan without reasonably determining that the consumer has the ability to repay the loan.  The proposal generally would require that, before making a covered loan, a lender must reasonably determine that the consumer has the ability to repay the loan.  The proposal also would impose certain restrictions on making covered loans when a consumer has or recently had certain outstanding loans. . . .  The proposal also would identify it as an unfair and abusive practice to attempt to withdraw payment from a consumer’s account for a covered loan after two consecutive payment attempts have failed, unless the lender obtains the consumer’s new and specific authorization to make further withdrawals from the account. The proposal would require lenders to provide certain notices to the consumer before attempting to withdraw payment for a covered loan from the consumer’s account. The proposal would also prescribe processes and criteria for registration of information systems, and requirements for furnishing loan information to and obtaining consumer reports from those registered information systems. The Bureau is proposing to adopt official interpretations to the proposed regulation.

In short, the CFPB NPRM, if implemented, would impose new and onerous costs on payday lenders with respect to each loan, arising out of:  (1) determination of the borrower’s ability to pay; (2) identification of the borrower’s other outstanding loans; (3) the practical inability to recover required payments from a defaulting consumer’s account (due to required consumer authorization and notice obligations); and (4) the registration of information systems and requirements for obtaining various sorts of consumer information from those systems.  In the aggregate, these costs would likely make a large number of payday loan programs unprofitable – thereby (1) driving those loans out of the market and harming legitimate lenders while also (2) denying credit to, and thereby reducing the welfare of, the consumers who would be denied their best feasible source of credit.

As Heritage Foundation scholar Norbert Michel put it in a June 2, 2016 Daily Signal article:

The CFPB’s [NPRM] regulatory solution . . . centers on an absurd concept: ability to repay. Basically, the new rules force lenders to certify that consumers have the ability to repay their loan, turning the idea of voluntary exchange on its head.

Here, too, the new rules are based on the flawed idea that firms typically seek out consumers who can’t possibly pay what they owe. It doesn’t take a graduate degree to figure out that’s not a viable long-term business strategy.

None of this matters to the CFPB. Shockingly, neither does the CFPB’s own evidence.

In sum, the CFPB NPRM provides yet one more good reason for Congress to seriously consider abolishing the CFPB (legislation introduced by the House and Senate in 2015 would do this), with consumer protection authority authorities currently exercised by the Bureau returned to the seven agencies that originally administered them.   While we are awaiting congressional action, however, the CFPB would be well-advised (assuming it truly desires to promote economic welfare) to reconsider its latest ill-considered initiative and withdraw the NPRM as soon as possible.

In Banking, Constitutional Law, Credit Cards, Economic Theory, Financial Regulation, Truth on the Market , , ,
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Time to Get Rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Alden Abbott —  9 February 2016

In my Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum published yesterday, I call for elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), on constitutional and economic policy grounds.  As I explain:

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is living up to its billing as one of the most powerful—and unaccountable—federal agencies ever created.  After just 18 months—and with a staff exceeding 1,000 and funding of $600 million—the bureau is restructuring the mortgage market; devising restrictions on credit bureaus, education loans, overdraft policies, payday lenders, credit card plans and prepaid cards; and amassing unverified complaints with which to assail creditors and bankers. This inordinate control over consumer finance is constraining credit and harming the economy. . . .

The bureau was designed to evade the checks and balances that apply to most other regulatory agencies. Its very structure invites expansive rulemaking, as does its misappropriation of the emergent theory of behavioral economics that drives bureau decision making. It deems consumers prone to financial irrationality and thus ill-equipped to act in their self-interest. Consequently, the CFPB is compelled to intervene in consumers’ personal financial transactions.

Government interference in the financial market does not come without consequences. In the case of the CFPB, the rule of law is being supplanted by regulatory whim, producing deep uncertainty in the consumer financial market. And, the new regulatory strictures will increase consumers’ costs and reduce consumers’ choices of financial products and services.

Lawmakers must curtail the bureau’s unconstrained powers. Outright elimination of the CFPB is the best option. Consumer protection can be advanced instead through better coordination among [other existing and more accountable] financial regulator[y] [agencies]. Proceeding toward bureau dissolution, bureau funding should be controlled by Congress, and the vague language of the CFPB’s statutory mandate must be tightened to stop bureaucrats from defining—and expanding—their own powers.

In sum, elimination of the CFPB, accompanied by reallocation of its essential functions to other agencies and the paring back of excessive financial services regulation, would promote a sounder economy and greater constitutional accountability.

In Credit Cards, Financial Regulation, Truth on the Market ,
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Time to Apply Office of Management and Budget Regulatory Review to Independent Agencies

Alden Abbott —  15 October 2015

Last June, in Michigan v. EPA, the Supreme Court commendably recognized cost-benefit analysis as critical to any reasoned evaluation of regulatory proposals by federal agencies.  (For more on the merits and limitations of this holding, see my June 29 blog.)  The White House (Office of Management and Budget) office that evaluates proposed federal regulations, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), does not, however, currently assess independent agencies’ regulations (the Heritage Foundation has argued that independent agencies should be subjected to Executive Branch regulatory review).  This is most unfortunate, because the economic impact of independent agencies’ regulations (such as those promulgated by the Federal Communications Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among many other “independent” entities) is enormous.

Recent research lends strong support to the case for OIRA review of independent agency regulations.  As former OIRA Administrator Susan Dudley (currently Director of the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center) explained in recent testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, independent agencies have done an extremely poor job in evaluating the economic effects of their regulatory initiatives:

“The Administrative Conference of the United States recommended in 2013 that independent regulatory agencies adopt more transparent and rigorous regulatory analyses practices for major rules.  OIRA observed in its most recent regulatory report to Congress that “the independent agencies still continue to struggle in providing monetized estimates of benefits and costs of regulation.”  According to available government data, more than 40 percent of the rules developed by independent agencies over the last 10 years provided no information on either the costs or the benefits expected from their implementation.”

This poor record provides strong justification for legislative proposals (such as, the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2015 (S. 1607), which explicitly authorizes presidents to require independent regulatory agencies to comply with regulatory analysis requirements.  They also lend further support to congressional proposals (such as the REINS Act, which passed the House in August 2015) that would require congressional approval of new “major” regulations promulgated by federal agencies, including independent agencies.  For a more extensive discussion of the costs of overregulation and needed regulatory reforms, see the Heritage Foundation’s memorandum “Red Tape Rising: Six Years of Escalating Regulation Under Obama.”

There is also a substantial constitutional argument that pursuant to the U.S. Constitution’s Executive Vesting Clause (Article II, Section 1, Clause 1) and Take Care Clause (Article II, Section 3), the President could direct that OIRA review independent agencies’ regulatory proposals, but an assessment of that interesting proposition is beyond the scope of this commentary.

In Constitutional Law, Federal Communications Commission, Regulation, Regulatory Reform, Telecommunications , ,
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What Would the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Say About Healthcare.gov?

Thom Lambert —  25 October 2013

In yesterday’s hearings on the disastrous launch of the federal health insurance exchanges, contractors insisted that part of the problem was a last-minute specification from the government:  the feds didn’t want people to be able to “window shop” for health insurance until they had created a profile and entered all sorts of personal information.

That’s understandable.  For this massive social experiment to succeed — or, at least, to fail less badly — young, healthy people need to buy health insurance.  Policy prices for those folks, though, are going to be really high because (1) the ACA requires all sorts of costly coverages people used to be able to decline, and (2) the Act’s “community rating” and “guaranteed issue” provisions prevent insurers from charging older and sicker people an actuarily appropriate rate and therefore require their subsidization by the young and healthy.  To prevent the sort of sticker shock that might cause young invincibles to forego purchasing insurance, Obamacare advocates didn’t want them seeing unsubsidized insurance rates.  Determining a person’s subsidy, though, requires submisison of all sorts of personal information.  Thus, the original requirement that website visitors create a profile and provide gobs of information before seeing insurance rates.

Given the website’s glitches and the difficulty of actually creating a working profile, the feds have now reversed course and are permitting window shopping.  An applicant can enter his or her state and county, family size, and age range (<50 or >50) and receive a selection of premium estimates.  To avoid dissuading people from applying for coverage in light of high premiums, the website takes great pains to emphasize that the estimated premiums do not account for the available subsidies to which most people will be entitled.  For example, to get my own quote, I had to answer a handful of questions and click “Next” a few times, and in the process of doing so, the website announced seven times that the estimated prices I was about to see would not include the generous subsdies to which I would probably be entitled.  The Obamacare folks, you see, want us consumers to know what we’re really going to have to pay.

Or do they?

According to the website, I could buy a Coventry Bronze $15 co-pay plan for $218.03 per month (unsubsidized).  An Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Direct Access Plan would cost me $213.39 per month (unsubsidized).  When I went to a private exchange and conducted the same inquiry, however, I learned that the price for the former policy would be $278.66 and, for the latter, between $270.17.  So the private exchange tells me the price for my insurance would be 27% percent higher than the amount Healthcare.gov estimates in its window shopping feature.  What gives?

As it turns out, the federal exchange assumes (without admitting it) that anyone under age 49 is 27 years old.  The private website, by contrast, based quotes on my real age (42).  Obviously, the older a person is, the higher the premium will be.  Since the ACA mandates that individuals up to age 26 be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance policies, the age the federal website assumes is the very youngest age at which most people would be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.  In other words, the federal website picks the rosiest assumption in estimating insurance premiums and never once tells users it’s doing so.  It does, however, awkwardly remind them seven times in fewer than seven consecutive screens that their actual premiums will probably be lower than the figure quoted.

Can you imagine if a private firm pulled this sort of stunt?  Elizabeth Warren’s friends at the CFPB would be on it like white on rice!

Look, the website problems are a red herring.  Sure, they’re shockingly severe, and they do illustrate the limits of government to run things effectively, limits the ACA architects resolutely disregarded.  But they’ll get fixed eventually.  The main reason they’re a long-term problem is that they exacerbate the Act’s most fundamental flaw: its tendency to create a death spiral of adverse selection in which older and sicker people, beneficiaries under the ACA, purchase health insurance, while young, healthy folks, losers under the Act, forego it.  Once this happens, insurance premiums will skyrocket, encouraging even more young and healthy people to drop out of the pool of insureds and thereby making things even worse.  The most significant problem stemming from the website “glitches” (my, how that term has been stretched!) is that they have made it so hard to apply for insurance that only those most desperate for it — the old and sick, the ones we least need in the pool of insureds — will go through the rigmarole of signing up.  On this point, see Holman Jenkins and George Will.

But who knows.  Maybe Zeke Emanuel can fix the problem by getting the Red Sox to sell Obamacare to young invincibles.  (I’m not kidding.  That was his plan for avoiding adverse selection.)

Go Cards!

In Health Care, Health Insurance, Regulation, Truth on the Market , ,
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Ginsburg & Wright on Behavioral Law and Economics: Its Origins, Fatal Flaws, and Implications for Liberty

Josh Wright —  19 September 2012

My paper with Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg (D.C. Circuit; NYU Law), Behavioral Law & Economics: Its Origins, Fatal Flaws, and Implications for Liberty, is posted to SSRN and now published in the Northwestern Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Behavioral economics combines economics and psychology to produce a body of evidence that individual choice behavior departs from that predicted by neoclassical economics in a number of decision-making situations. Emerging close on the heels of behavioral economics over the past thirty years has been the “behavioral law and economics” movement and its philosophical foundation — so-called “libertarian paternalism.” Even the least paternalistic version of behavioral law and economics makes two central claims about government regulation of seemingly irrational behavior: (1) the behavioral regulatory approach, by manipulating the way in which choices are framed for consumers, will increase welfare as measured by each individual’s own preferences and (2) a central planner can and will implement the behavioral law and economics policy program in a manner that respects liberty and does not limit the choices available to individuals. This Article draws attention to the second and less scrutinized of the behaviorists’ claims, viz., that behavioral law and economics poses no significant threat to liberty and individual autonomy. The behaviorists’ libertarian claims fail on their own terms. So long as behavioral law and economics continues to ignore the value to economic welfare and individual liberty of leaving individuals the freedom to choose and hence to err in making important decisions, “libertarian paternalism” will not only fail to fulfill its promise of increasing welfare while doing no harm to liberty, it will pose a significant risk of reducing both.

Download here.

 

In Law & Economics , , ,
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Macey Throws Some Cold Water on the CFPB’s New Mortgage Disclosures

Josh Wright —  18 July 2012

In the WSJ, Professor Macey takes measure of the CFPB’s new mortgage disclosures and finds them lacking:

The CFPB is proposing to revise the old forms into a new Loan Estimate Form and Closing Disclosure Form. The old loan form had been five pages; according to the agency website, the new one is three. The closing form remains at five pages. That’s a net savings of two pieces of paper. But the agency rules required to implement the new forms weigh in at an astonishing 1,099 pages.

In evaluating the substance of the new disclosure themselves, Macey concludes the new forms are likely to harm consumers rather than help them.

Do the new rules expand consumer choice? They would forbid many borrowers from making smaller payments every month, followed by a single, one-time balloon payment to retire the principal at the end. They also would cap late fees—which means borrowers would be unable to get a lower interest rate on a loan by agreeing to pay a penalty if they don’t make their payments on time.

The new rules restrict loan-modification fees, which means mortgagors will offer fewer options to do so. They restrict penalties on borrowers who pay off their home loans early. These prepayment fees compensate lenders for the risk of lower returns on their loans. Without this protection they will either decline to offer loans to some borrowers or charge a higher interest rate.

The government’s proposed rules require high-risk customers in high-cost loan markets to meet with financial counselors before taking out a loan. The regulators also want to expand dramatically the number of mortgages classified as high cost. But financial counselors will have to be compensated, whether their advice is good or bad. The law deprives these consumers of the right to do their own homework.

Oddly, hidden on the new disclosure forms is the Annual Percentage Rate. For decades the APR was front and center on government-mandated disclosure documents. It is the single number that shows borrowers the cost of borrowing including such factors as the interest rate, certain fees, and the maturity structure of the loan.

The CFPB claims its consumer testing showed people didn’t understand the APR. Yet if someone is trying to compare two loans—one with a lower interest rate and $15,000 in fees, the other with lower fees but a higher interest rate—it’s not possible to determine which loan is cheaper without the APR.  The new rules do not attempt to generate a single number that can be used for comparison purposes and instead focus on various components of the loan such as fees, penalties, interest rates and maturity separately. This makes it harder, not easier, for borrowers to compare mortgage options.

Ultimately, we will be able to evaluate the impact of these new disclosures empirically by watching the results of the CFPB’s “experiment.”

In Google, Platforms, Truth on the Market ,
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New Article Forthcoming in Yale Law Journal: The Antitrust/ Consumer Protection Paradox: Two Policies At War With One Another

Josh Wright —  31 May 2012

Yale Law Journal has published my article on “The Antitrust/ Consumer Protection Paradox: Two Policies At War With One Another.”  The hat tip to Robert Bork’s classic “Antitrust Paradox” in the title will be apparent to many readers.  The primary purpose of the article is to identify an emerging and serious conflict between antitrust and consumer protection law arising out of a sharp divergence in the economic approaches embedded within antitrust law with its deep attachment to rational choice economics on the one hand, and the new behavioral economics approach of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  This intellectual rift brings with it serious – and detrimental – consumer welfare consequences.  After identifying the causes and consequences of that emerging rift, I explore the economic, legal, and political forces supporting the rift.

Here is the abstract:

The potential complementarities between antitrust and consumer protection law— collectively, “consumer law”—are well known. The rise of the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) portends a deep rift in the intellectual infrastructure of consumer law that threatens the consumer-welfare oriented development of both bodies of law. This Feature describes the emerging paradox that rift has created: a body of consumer law at war with itself. The CFPB’s behavioral approach to consumer protection rejects revealed preference— the core economic link between consumer choice and economic welfare and the fundamental building block of the rational choice approach underlying antitrust law. This Feature analyzes the economic, legal, and political institutions underlying the potential rise of an incoherent consumer law and concludes that, unfortunately, there are several reasons to believe the intellectual rift shaping the development of antitrust and consumer protection will continue for some time.

Go read the whole thing.

In Antitrust & Competition, Federal Trade Commission, Law & Economics , , ,
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A new approach to consumer regulation: firm ownership

Larry Ribstein —  24 October 2011

We have heard a lot about how business exploits consumer biases and therefore we need more regulation and disclosure.  By the time the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets up to speed, maybe the regulators will realize their dream of consumers behaving as they should.  In the meantime, Ryan Bubb and Alex Kaufman have another approach in their new paper, Consumer Biases and Firm Ownership: have the consumers own the firms. Here’s the abstract:

In this paper we show how ownership of the firm by its customers, as well as nonprofit status, can prevent the firm from exploiting consumer biases. By eliminating an outside residual claimant with control over the firm, these alternatives to investor ownership reduce the incentive of the firm to offer contractual terms that exploit the mistakes consumers make. However, customers who are unaware of their behavioral biases, and consequent vulnerability to exploitation, may fail to recognize this advantage of non-investor-owned firms and instead continue to patronize investor-owned firms. We present evidence from the consumer financial services market that supports our theory. Comparing contract terms, we find that mutually owned firms offer lower penalties, such as default interest rates, and higher up-front prices, such as introductory interest rates, than do investor-owned firms. However, consumers most vulnerable to these penalties are no more likely to use mutually owned firms.

Now, I am all for business forms competing with each other, including co-ops and capitalist owned firms.  As Henry Hansmann has written extensively, there is a place for non-shareholder-owned firms.

But Bubb & Kaufman go further.  It’s not enough for them just to let co-ops and capitalist-owned firms compete for consumers’ business.  They conclude that since misguided consumers continue to buy from the wrong firms, their judgment can’t be trusted.  Therefore, “policies that expand the market share of mutuals may be an effective way to reduce the social costs that result from consumers’ mistakes.”

I’m interested in seeing what these “policies that expand the market share of mutuals” might be.  Not to get too overheated or to indulge in slippery-slopism, but this seems to be an argument that capitalism plus regulation isn’t working, which would seem to lead to regulation of which types of firms can compete in which markets.

How far would this go? The authors suggest that “firm ownership plays a similar role in attenuating firms’ incentives to exploit consumer biases in other markets, such as education and health care.” And obviously consumers aren’t the only ones getting hurt. What about “policies that expand the market of” employee-owned firms?

Before we get on this slope, we might ask how far Bubb & Kaufman’s evidence can take us.  It’s hard to believe that, what with Elizabeth Warren and all, consumers could not have gotten the message that the capitalists are trying to cheat them, particularly in the financial services industry.  Could it be that their stubborn insistence on buying from these firms even when they have a choice means they just don’t believe it?  Or that capitalist-owned firms provide better value and products overall even if they insist on grabbing a bit more consumer surplus than customer-owned firms?  Or maybe even that the capitalist owned firms aren’t cheating the consumers after all because one-sided terms aren’t as bad as the pro-regulatory commentators would have us believe?

Before we start to regulate against capitalist-owned firms I’d like to see more evidence than just that consumers insist on dealing with them even when behavioral theories suggest they shouldn’t.

In Financial Regulation ,
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My Reflections on The Senate CFPB Hearing

Josh Wright —  9 September 2011

[Cross-posted at PYMNTS.COM]

Richard Cordray’s nomination hearing provided an opportunity to learn something new about the substantive policies of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Unfortunately, that opportunity came and went without answering many of the key questions that remain concerning the impact of the CFPB’s enforcement and regulatory agenda on the availability of consumer credit, economic growth, and jobs.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s critics, including myself, [1] have expressed concerns that the CFPB— through enforcement and regulation—could harm consumers and small businesses by reducing the availability of credit.  The intellectual blueprint for the CFPB is founded on the insight, from behavioral economics, that “[m]any consumers are uninformed and irrational,” that “consumers make systematic mistakes in their choice of credit products,” and that the CFPB should play a central role in determining which and to what extent these products are used. [2] The CFPB’s recent appointment of Sendhil Mullainathan as its Assistant Director for Research confirms its commitment to the behaviorist approach to regulation of consumer credit.  Mullainathan, in work co-authored with Professor Michael S. Barr, provided the intellectual basis for the much debated “plain vanilla” provision in the original legislation and advocated a whole host of new consumer credit regulations ranging from improved disclosures to “harder” forms of paternalism.  The concern, in short, is that the CFPB is hard-wired to take a myopic view of the tried-and-true benefits of consumer credit markets and runs the risk of harming many (and especially the socially and economically disadvantaged groups in the greatest need of access to consumer credit) in the name of protecting the few.

To be sure, there is absolutely no doubt that there are unscrupulous and unsavory characters in lending markets engaging in bad acts ranging from fraud to preying upon vulnerable borrowers.  Nonetheless, it is critical to recognize the positive role that lending markets and the availability of consumer credit has played in the American economy, especially in facilitating entrepreneurial activity and small business growth.  Taking into account these important benefits is fundamental to developing sound consumer credit policy.  I had hoped that the hearings might focus upon Mr. Cordray’s underlying philosophical approach to weighing the costs and benefits of credit regulation and how that balance might be struck at his CFPB.  They did not, instead focusing largely upon another important issue: the precise contours of CFPB authority and oversight.

Currently, the unemployment rate is over 9 percent and all of the available evidence suggests the CFPB’s approach will run a significant risk of overregulation that will reduce the availability of consumer credit to small businesses and thus further depress the economy.  Therefore, getting hard answers concerning how the CFPB views and will account for these risks in its enforcement and regulatory decisions is critical.  Certainly, the nomination hearing offered small hints toward this end.  We learned that under Mr. Cordray’s watch, CFPB enforcement will involve not only lawsuits but also a “more flexible toolbox” that includes “research reports, rulemaking guidance, consumer education and empowerment, and the ability to supervise and examine both large banks and many nonbank institutions.”

The job of protecting consumers in financial products markets—the domain of the new CFPB—extends to all such consumers.  The benefits of healthy markets and competition in consumer credit products has generated tremendous economic benefits to the most disadvantaged as well as to small businesses.  If the CFPB agenda were limited to educating consumers about the costs and benefits of various products and improving disclosures, there would be far less need for concern that it will be a drag on consumers, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth.  However, the CFPB’s intellectual blueprint suggests a more aggressive and dangerous agenda, and the authority it has been granted renders that agenda feasible.  The CFPB must account for the benefits from lending markets and balance them against its laudable objective of preventing deceptive practices when crafting its enforcement and regulatory agenda.  Unfortunately, after Tuesday’s nomination hearing, the CFPB’s approach to this complex and delicate balance remains an open question.

—–

[1] David S. Evans & Joshua D. Wright, The Effect of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 on Consumer Credit, 22(3) Loyola Consumer L. Rev. 277 (2010).

[2] Oren Bar-Gill & Elizabeth Warren, Making Credit Safer, 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1, 39 (2008).

In Credit Cards , , , ,
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