Debt collection practices have been getting a lot of attention lately. They deserve it. Millions of Americans have experienced harassing phone calls, demands for payment of money not truly owed or illegal threats of dire consequences, up to and including imprisonment. These abuses are disturbingly common – in fact, they’re built into the way a great many debt collectors do business. When taking out a loan, your loan provider must have a license and tell you straight away if you’re eligible for the loan. Too many people take out loans they can’t afford. For example, Fresh Loan has an easy to use app which tells you if you’re eligible to take out within minutes and can then provide a repayment plan within the amount of time you have set up for your loan. Your loan providers should be helpful with any issues that may occur as well as being clear about their terms and conditions. You may be someone struggling with debt, be it from personal loans or credit card payments, but there are ways to make the stresses of being in debt manageable. Check out tax debt relief since this might help you if you have got into debt by not paying your taxes. There are lots of different types of debt relief options that are definitely worth looking into. Another way is to acquire a debt consolidation loan like this – debtconsolidation.loans.

Fortunately, two federal agencies – the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission – have the authority to address such problems. And both agencies have been gathering evidence on this market.

Debt collection, the bureau says, has quickly become its number one source of complaints. It ranks third at the FTC, where such complaints have increased more than 1,400 percent since 2000 — from 13,950 complants to last year’s total of 204,644.

Abusive debt collection practices can take a terrible toll, emotionally and practically. Beyond the fear, stress and embarrassment they cause, families can have their bank accounts frozen, making it impossible to pay for food, housing, utilities and other basic expenses. Debt collectors frequently place incorrect information on people’s credit reports, impairing their ability to secure credit, housing and even employment in some cases. Although people can use Credit cards to build credit and monitor their credit score as often as possible, it’s still incredibly difficult to do so if debt collectors are following you around.

Almost all of the millions of collection suits filed against consumers each year are uncontested and result in default judgments against the consumer. And while the industry would say that’s because consumers really owe the money, studies point to an array of other factors, including illness, injury, inability to take time off from work, lack of notice, misunderstanding of the requirements for filing a legally proper response, and confusion stemming from the obscure and complicated language of summonses. In short, under current rules and procedures, the courts are not a fair playing field once a debt collector decides to go after you.

Consumer bureau complaint data, according to a report released this week, indicates that the most common grievances are mistaken information, which comes up more than half of the time, and what the bureau calls “aggressive communication tactics and threats” – the theme of nearly a quarter of its complaints.

Appalling anecdotes abound. In Missouri, an employed woman who had simply forgotten about a $425 loan was arrested and spent three nights in jail, until her mother finally borrowed $1,250 to pay her bond. In Illinois, an elderly woman was repeatedly called and harassed over a debt allegedly owed by her ex-husband, from whom she had been divorced for more than 30 years. In another Illinois case, a woman who was caring for four profoundly disabled foster children nearly had her bank account frozen (despite the fact that it contained nothing but public-benefit funds designated for the children’s care) as a result of a judgment that had been vacated years earlier. Another woman, suffering from early-onset dementia, was harassed over a loan that belonged to her ex-husband; the frequent calls contributed to her need to move into a nursing home.

While debt-collection problems have a long history, the recent combination of aggressive lending and widespread economic distress has made them considerably worse. Household debt nearly doubled in the half-decade before the financial crisis of 2008; the reckless lending and deceptive loans of those years contributed to a sharp rise in payment delinquency, which was accompanied by an explosion of new debt buyers and a deterioration of industry practices.

Having paid pennies on the dollar for the right to go after a portfolio of supposedly delinquent debtors, many debt buyers fail to ascertain the validity of the information passed along to them. Often, years have passed and misinformation about the debt or the debtor has become embedded into the collection process. Rather than sort through such issues, collectors often adopt a shotgun approach, hoping to frighten a few people into paying, whether they owe the money or not.

A third factor may also have been at work: Although Congress had passed a Fair Debt Collection Practices law in 1977, and the FTC has ramped up its enforcement efforts in the last few years, no agency had been given the power to issue specific rules for debt collectors until the enactment of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010.

Under Dodd-Frank, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rule-making as well as enforcement power; it has the authority not only to impose new and substantively stronger obligations on debt collectors, but also to create incentives for all industry players to improve the accuracy of their collection efforts and steer clear of harassment and abuse. With those powers, the bureau is in a position to improve things significantly.

The National Consumer Law Center, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, Americans for Financial Reform and other consumer groups have called on the consumer bureau to take a number of steps to improve the world of debt collection. Some of the major recommendations include: strengthening consumer remedies against ongoing abusive practices; requiring debt collectors to verify information before they act on it; curtailing telephone harassment by limiting calls to a more reasonable number; creating an effective mechanism to help consumers enforce their right to request that collectors stop communicating with them; and making sure the relevant rules cover payday lenders, credit card companies and other creditors as well third-party debt collectors.

— Rebecca Thiess and Ellen M. Taverna

Rebecca Thiess is a policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. Ellen M. Taverna is the Legislative Director at the National Association of Consumer Advocates. Originally published on USNews.com.

Four years ago, with the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, Congress established basic standards of safety and transparency for the massive and previously unregulated derivatives markets that played a central role in crashing the world economy. Now nineteen current and former legislators involved in drafting that legislation, led by former Representative Barney Frank, are speaking out to oppose Wall Street’s efforts to do an end-run around the law.

 The question at issue is whether U.S. derivatives rules will govern transactions conducted through nominally overseas entities, like foreign subsidiaries of U.S. banks, or foreign banks who are key players in the U.S. derivatives markets. This is a critical question because the largest global banks can shift derivatives risks and funding between thousands of international subsidiaries at the touch of a computer keyboard. Nominally, a transaction may be booked in a foreign subsidiary, incorporated in the Cayman Islands or Hong Kong, but the risk and economic impact remain with the U.S. economy. It’s impossible to effectively regulate derivatives markets without applying rules to transactions conducted through foreign subsidiaries.

In fact, if you’ve read about a major scandal involving derivatives, chances are foreign subsidiary transactions were at the center of the affair. In the 1990s, Long Term Capital Management almost brought down Wall Street with trillions in derivatives traded through Cayman Islands subsidiaries, and in Britain the 230 year-old Barings Bank failed thanks to the actions of a single rogue derivatives trader. During the financial crisis, AIG’s London subsidiary, AIG Financial Products, experienced massive derivatives losses that resulted in a U.S. taxpayer bailout. And even more recently, the London Whale created billions of dollars in losses for JP Morgan through London derivatives trades.

No one understands all this better than the major Wall Street banks, who routinely conduct over half of their derivatives transactions through foreign subsidiaries. That’s why as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) finally begins to implement Dodd-Frank derivatives rules, the major Wall Street derivatives dealers are trying a last minute end run around derivatives enforcement. Their vehicle is a major lawsuit that seeks to stop the derivatives regulation in its tracks by banning any cross-border enforcement of any Dodd-Frank derivatives oversight. Arguing that the CFTC has failed to comply with technical procedural requirements for economic analysis, a few global mega-banks are asking the court to forbid the agency from enforcing any of the Dodd-Frank derivatives and commodity market reforms at foreign subsidiaries of U.S. banks, or foreign banks operating in the U.S. If they get everything they’re asking for, dozens of rules that took years to complete will be rendered almost impossible to enforce, until elaborate new rulemaking procedures are completed for each and every rule. That would add fresh years of delay to the three and a half years we’ve already waited for real derivatives oversight.

But there’s at least one major problem with their argument: Congress also understood the danger of cross-border evasion of derivatives rules, and ensured that the CFTC has clear jurisdiction to address it. Specifically, Section 722(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act states clearly and unambiguously that any CFTC derivatives rule governs not just transactions conducted on U.S. soil, but also any nominally foreign transaction that has a ‘direct and significant’ connection with U.S. commerce. 

Now Congress is speaking up against Wall Street’s attempt to use procedural technicalities to dodge this clear statutory rule. Today, nineteen current and former Representatives and Senators, led by former representative Barney Frank, a lead drafter of the Dodd-Frank Act, filed an amicus brief opposing the big banks’ case. Their brief makes a conclusive case for Congress’ intent to properly regulate all derivatives that impact the U.S. economy – even those that take an end run through a foreign country. Let’s hope that this strong statement by Congress leads the court to push back the bank’s attempt to get out of the rules.

Whether people are bitcoin ostaminen, investing in stocks or investing in property, everyone has to pay taxes on top of these investments. If you are wanting to invest your money in new things then take a look at this Bitcoin Revolution review because it might be the perfect app to help boost your investment portfolio. Independent investors understand this and take the best investment route that will leave them with minimal taxes at the end. However, investors on Wall Street do everything they can to avoid paying taxes and there are far too many loopholes they can exploit. There are many inequities in our tax system, but here’s one that should really command the attention of a country still reeling from the aftershocks of the financial crisis and bank bailouts: the “financial services industry,” as it has come to be known, is badly undertaxed compared to other industries. While banks and financial companies reap more than 30 percent of the nation’s corporate profits, they pay only about 18 percent of corporate taxes and contribute less than 2 percent of total tax revenues, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the International Monetary Fund.

As part of its broader budget plan, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is advancing a set of good ideas for leveling the playing field. In its “Better-Off Budget” blueprint, released today, the Progressive Caucus proposes:

• A Wall Street speculation tax, also known as a financial transaction tax — a very small levy on the trading of stocks, derivatives and complex financial instruments;
• A big-bank excise tax applied to the ten or so banks with assets of $500 billion of more; and
• The sharp reduction of a subsidy arrangement in which banks receive so-called “dividends” (totaling more than $1.6 billion last year) from the Federal Reserve.

In addition to these ideas, which explicitly relate to the financial sector, the Progressive Caucus budget includes broader provisions that would have significant effects on Wall Street. Two that stand out are an end to the preferential tax treatment of capital gains (you can learn more about capital gains valuations here) and an enforceable $1 million-a-year limit on the tax deductibility of corporate executives’ paychecks.

The net effect would be to make the tax system fairer overall and make sure that Wall Street does more to help the country recover from an economic calamity that was largely its doing. Several of the Progressive Caucus’ proposals would also set better incentives for the financial sector itself. For accounting services similar to Ross & Partners, filing the likes of financial transaction taxes could prove profitable and increase the circulation of money.

A tax on the very largest banks could, along with other policies, help address the “too big to fail” problem and the unhealthy trend of increased concentration – and reduced competition – in the banking industry. A small transaction tax could help nudge the industry away from high-frequency trading and ultra-short-term speculation toward a longer-term investment outlook and practices with a clearer value to the society at large. (A new report released today by Public Citizen refutes one of the key arguments used by the financial industry to keep that idea off the table: the claim that ordinary investors would be hurt.)

These ideas, of course, comprise just a small part of the Progressive Caucus budget, which contains many proposals to improve tax fairness, address income inequality and spur investment in infrastructure and clean energy. But their inclusion is one sign of growing, and widening, support for the basic concept of getting Wall Street to assume more of the tax burden. The big bank tax, for example, is similar to one advocated by the Obama administration, and not so different from one embraced by House Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich. Camp’s tax-reform plan also includes a more limited version of the proposal to cap the deductibility of corporate pay. (On this count, Camp and the Progressive Caucus are both, in a sense, just trying to put teeth into a law that supposedly established a $1 million cap – 20 years ago!)

Several of the Progressive Caucus’ ideas are also the subject of stand-alone bills in the House, the Senate or both. Those bills include two different transaction tax bills – one co-authored by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and the other introduced by Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. – and companion bills on the deductibility of executive pay introduced by Sens Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. Meanwhile, 11 European countries are moving ahead with their version of a financial transaction tax.

The Progressive Caucus has done the country a service by putting these worthy proposals on the table. They should be taken seriously.

– Jim Lardner

Originally published on USNews.com,

This morning, I testify in the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit of the House Financial Services Committee in the latest hearing on the Target data breach. The committee should post all the testimony and have a live video feed here at 10am.

When a car buyer finances a car through a car dealer, he or she signs a contract with the dealer for the car purchase and loan. For me, personally I use leasing brokers as they find the best deals for you and provide support to help save time and money for the customers. And if you are thinking of using a leasing broker then you should make sure that they are also motor trade insurance brokers, this way you should be able to test drive the car with ease. In the vast majority of cases, the dealer will quickly get funding for the loan by selling that contract to a third party, such as a bank or finance company. The potential funders also receive the consumer’s financial information to help them determine pricing on the loan. The dealer then collects bids from interested financial institutions, which outline the terms and conditions the funder will accept, including the interest rate. When it comes to taking out a loan for a car, you want to make sure everything goes as smoothly as it can. With the use of an auto loan payment calculator, there shouldn’t be any surprises as to what you’d have to pay, as you’ll get a break down of the costs. This just makes it so much easier, as we all know how stressful it can be when you have financial problems. Anything to take of the pressure is worth it.

What most car buyers don’t know is that the bank funding the loan allows the dealer to increase the interest rate for compensation. For example, a bank may be willing to buy the contract as long as the interest rate is at least 4 percent, but will permit the dealer to charge the consumer up to 6.5 percent interest. The dealer is paid some or all the difference, which is the “markup.”

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that for dealer-financed cars bought in 2009, over the life of their loans buyers will pay $25.8 billion in interest solely attributable to this markup. In 2009, the average markup was nearly 2.5 percent, hiking costs for each loan by hundreds of dollars. While we believe dealers should be compensated for the work they do in financing cars, they shouldn’t have arbitrary discretion to take more in compensation from some buyers than others.

Unfortunately, a long trail of cases shows that the dealer system is patently unfair. Most recently, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Ally Financial based on discriminatory markup practices. They found that the average African-American car buyer who received an Ally loan paid more than $300 in additional interest over the course of the loan than white borrowers with similar qualifications. While agreeing to pay $98 million to settle these claims, Ally has also said that it plans to continue granting dealers the discretion to manipulate interest rates for compensation.

The dealers’ stubborn clinging to the markup system persists in spite of a history of legal violations dating back to the late 1990s. Again and again, lawsuits and investigations have found pricing discrimination. Not only do car buyers of color receive interest rate markups more frequently, they also consistently get higher markups than similar white borrowers.

The National Automobile Dealers Association recently proposed a voluntary plan for its dealers. Under this plan, rather than increase the interest rate on a case-by-case basis, dealers would mark up every interest rate. But here’s the catch: Dealers would still be free to lower rates if they so choose. This means that certain groups of consumers could still find themselves paying unjustifiably higher interest rates.

Dealers also try to justify markups by saying that their customers can negotiate the interest rate on their loan just like on the price of the car. The problem is this: Negotiation on interest rate doesn’t result in better pricing.

The Center for Responsible Lending recently released data showing that even though borrowers of color reported negotiating their interest rates at the same rate or more than white borrowers, they still paid higher interest rates. The data also showed that borrowers of color were more likely to be told information leading them to believe that further negotiation would be fruitless. When the dealer tells a consumer that the interest rate is the best that dealer can find, even though that may not be true, the consumer stops negotiating. But some smart customers might continue to negotiate with the right skills. Learning how to better negotiate could help get around this and lead to better deals, do you need negotiation skills training? A course from Scotwork could help you achieve your negotiating goals. Helping you get the best price for your car loan.

Ultimately, the banks that fund these loans have the power to stop abusive markups, but, as with the dealers, they don’t seem to be rushing to change. Recently, Wells Fargo announced that it will continue to allow dealers to mark up interest rates for compensation.

The Center for Responsible Lending and other groups believe that this particular form of compensation, which has a long history of unfairness, should be eliminated. Dealers already get compensated in forms other than marking up the interest rate. For instance, dealers receive a flat fee for every loan made under 0 percent and other low-interest rate promotions that manufacturers may offer. Dealers will still get compensated for their work, but with less incentive to sell consumers on the highest interest rate possible.

We applaud the Consumer Protection Bureau and Justice Department for their vigilance and action on the abuses that dealer interest rate markups cause. We think their recent actions are a step in the right direction, but we know that the only way to effectively eliminate abuse is to end this practice.

— Christopher Kukla

Originally published on USNews.com.