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News Release
Fed stays the course on fighting inflation and proving its independence: CEI analysis
The Federal Reserve has decided to not move interest rates, an expected decision that signals the Fed’s independence and its continued fight against inflation. CEI…
Newsweek
What Trump’s Housing Executive Order Means for Mortgages
Newsweek cited CEI’s expert on mortgage costs However, John Berlau, financial policy director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, called Trump’s proposal “misguided” and told Newsweek…
The Washington Post
Trump has lurched to the populist Left with recent economic proposals
The Washington Post cited CEI’s expert on financial policy “It won’t get to the root of the government-induced housing shortage, it will make things…
Search Posts
Blog
Protect Consumers, But Let Debt Collectors Do Their Jobs
Debt collector seem to be the occupation everyone loves to hate, but without them businesses large and small—from banks to gyms to doctor’s offices—could not serve…
Blog
Marijuana Industry Bank Reform on Capitol Hill Agenda
While the continued legalization of recreational and medicinal use of marijuana at the state level has undoubtedly been a win for liberty, there remains much…
Blog
Debt Collectors Keep Credit Market Flowing
Debt collecting is a profession that gets little love, but given the social good done by debt collectors who operate ethically and follow the rules,…
Blog
VIDEO: Financial Services for Everyone
Our friends at the Cato Institute recently hosted an excellent discussion on financial opportunity and inclusion titled “How Credit Is Reaching Underserved Communities,” featuring an…
DepositAccounts
Banking 101: What Is the Durbin Amendment?
DepositAccounts cites Senior Fellow John Berlau on Dodd-Frank and the Durbin Amendment. “In 2009, the year before Dodd-Frank, 76% of checking accounts were…
Blog
Defiance of Congress Melts Federal Reserve Credibility
In advance of his testimony yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was the subject of a front-page story in The…
Consumer Reports
One Month Left to Opt Out of Chase Binding Arbitration
Consumer Reports cites Senior Fellow John Berlau on credit card regulations. According to John Berlau, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
Blog
Commonsense New Debt Collection Rule from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) was passed in 1977, over forty years ago, at a time when telecommunication technology was in its infancy…
Blog
Facebook Libra Highlights Flaws of Fed Foray into Real-Time Payments
More than ten years after the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto published the source code for Bitcoin, and after hundreds of other cryptocurrencies have been introduced, Facebook…
Blog
Overhaul Internal Operations at Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
One of the most important, yet least visible, changes a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director could make is to reform the internal operations of…
Blog
Regulators Should Foster Financial Innovation
It is becoming increasingly apparent that financial technology, or “fintech,” like other forms of technology, can drastically improve consumers’ lives. Yet one of the most…
Blog
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Acknowledge Its Unconstitutional Structure
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s structure is unconstitutional. The agency’s leadership should recognize it as such.
Blog
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Define ‘Abusive’
The Dodd–Frank Act was a mammoth overhaul of financial services regulation. Along with creating an entire new consumer protection agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,…
Blog
SEC’s ‘Regulation Best Interest’ Respects Investor Choice
Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved final rules that comprise “Regulation Best Interest,” which will govern conduct of broker-dealers in their transactions with retail investors. Any…
Blog
Prevent Another Mortgage Crisis: Let Qualified Mortgage ‘Patch’ Expire
Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its rulemaking agenda for Spring 2019. While there weren’t too many surprises in the agenda, which mainly…
Blog
Don’t Let Credit Scoring Kerfuffle Compromise GSE Reform
Just when it seemed that reforming the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was becoming a “third rail” that politicians did not want…
Blog
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Drop Flawed Enforcement Actions
While the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s role in enforcing consumer protection laws is important, there are times when it oversteps the mark and brings frivolous…
Blog
Narrowly Address Fair Lending Requirements to Spare Impact on Small Business
Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to require financial institutions to collect, report, and make public certain information concerning…
Blog
Reform Fair Lending Laws to Uphold Rule of Law
The CFPB’s new director, Kathleen Kraninger, assured the Senate Banking Committee in her confirmation hearing that she was committed to upholding the rule of law.
Blog
Regulators Should Rescind ‘Small-Dollar’ Loan Rule
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the most controversial regulators in Washington, D.C. Since its founding in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street…
Blog
Credit Card Interest Cap Would Create Consumer Credit Bread Lines
Last Thursday Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) teamed up to introduce a bill that only two democratic socialists could have dreamed up.
Blog
Good and Bad of Government’s Debt Collection Proposal
Earlier this month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a much-anticipated proposal to revamp the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), a forty-two year old…
Blog
Australian Government Tempts Mortgage Crisis
It seems that Australia’s political parties are suffering from collective amnesia. After spending the earlier half of the year criticizing banks for abrogating their responsible…
Blog
The Economic Illiteracy of a 36 Percent Interest Rate Cap
Earlier this week, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on a draft bill that proposes to set a national 36 percent annual percentage…
Blog
Will Reforming Consumer Finance Regulation Cause a Recession?
Will reforming consumer finance regulation cause a recession? That is the claim of a recent article in The Hill. Yet, the article provides little evidence to…
Blog
CEI Leads Coalition Supporting Reformed Payday Loan Rule
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute led a coalition of eighteen free market organizations in support of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s decision to rescind portions of…
Blog
Reformed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Can Be Free-Market Regulator
Earlier this week, The New York Times Magazine rolled out another edition of the tired old trope of how former acting Director Mick Mulvaney “destroyed”…
Blog
Shed Light on Cryptocurrency ‘Dark Matter’ Regulation at SEC
A few days ago, the Trump administration issued a memorandum strongly discouraging what the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews has called “regulatory dark matter.” The…
Blog
Restrictions on Debt Collection Impede Access to Credit
In a market economy that is based on private property and the rule of law, the efficient and effective enforcement of contracts is indispensable. Without…
Blog
Lyft and the ‘Cheers’ IPOs: How Overregulation Leaves Middle-Class Investors Behind
After much anticipation, Lyft finally went public today, opening on NASDAQ at $87.24 per share—well above its initial public offering price of $72. Lyft’s market…
Blog
Bank Regulators Must Correct Flawed Volcker Rule Proposal
As my colleague Devin Watkins discussed earlier this month, a number of federal administrative agencies are refusing to correctly implement a crucial piece of regulatory…
Blog
Agencies Failing to Follow Law on Key Financial Regulation
The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 is one of the worst pieces of legislation to have become law in recent history. It created the Consumer Financial…
Blog
Fintech and the Future of Consumer Finance
Everyone understands the need for access to credit. No matter how well we budget, we occasionally come up short due to an unexpected circumstance or expense—a…
Blog
SEC Should Stop Coercing Brokers to Buy Data From Exchanges
There are many types of burdensome government mandates, but of all the Ten Thousand Commandments, regulations that coerce the purchase of a particular product or…
Blog
Financial Services ‘Regulatory Sandbox’ Is Win for Consumers
The comment period on a critical new initiative to promote innovation in financial services from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau closed this Monday. My colleague…
Comment
CEI Comments to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Proposed Policy on No-Action Letters and Product Sandbox
On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CEI"), we are pleased to provide the following comment letter on the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection’s (“Bureau,”…
Fox Business
Payday Loan Regulations Rollback is Win for Business, Consumers
Chalk up another win for President Trump’s deregulatory agenda - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week announced a plan to reconsider an Obama-era regulation…
Blog
VIDEO: Operation Choke Point Sets Dangerous Precedent
Our friends at the Federalist Society have an interesting new video out on legal businesses being targeted for government harassment because their products have become politically…
Fox News
Super Bowl – Here’s Why it’s a Big Deal That You Can Place Your (Legal) Bets on the Big Game
For the first time since 1992, Americans outside of Nevada can legally wager on the outcome of the Super Bowl. This comes thanks to a recent…
Blog
Fintech: A Bipartisan Priority for the 116th Congress
While the 115th Congress did not achieve all that was hoped for with regards to financial services reform, it did make important progress to achieving…
Blog
Rep. Waters Reiterates Support for JOBS Act 3.0
In a major speech to a liberal group outlining her priorities as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) sharply criticized…
Daily Mail
Chips are Down for Online Gamblers as US Moves Toward New Ban
Daily Mail cited Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on online gambling: But Michelle Minton, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the…
News Release
Trump Justice Department Pits 1961 Law Against Online Gambling
In an effort to strike at online gambling, the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel this week issued a new opinion that will allow…
News Release
Supreme Court Declines to Hear Lawsuit Challenging CFPB Constitutionality
The Supreme Court today declined to hear a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Reason
The DOJ Shouldn’t Reignite the Fight Against Intrastate Gambling
Reason cited research by Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on state gambling regulations and the Department of Justice. Research into a history of the Wire…
Blog
Agenda for the 116th Congress: The Second Decade of Crypto-Blockchain
As cryptocurrency and the associated blockchain celebrate their tenth birthdays, CEI’s new “Free to Prosper” agenda for the 116th Congress aims to ensure bureaucratic red…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Consumer Financial Protection
2018 was a big year for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (also known, for a while, as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection). The past year…
The Hill
Supreme Court Should do What Congress Won’t: Rein in the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection
This April, something remarkable happened in Washington D.C. The acting head of a federal agency told Congress that the agency he directs “is far too…
News Release
CEI: Rumored DOJ Memo to Restrict States’ Power to Regulate Intrastate Gambling Would be “Dangerous Precedent”
According to reports, the Department of Justice is considering releasing a memo that reverses a 2011 decision by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which…
Blog
Year in Review 2018: Operation Choke Point
Every Halloween, there exists the temptation for commentators to describe routine events in the news with adjectives like “scary” and “frightening.” Sensitive to sounding clichéd…