Economics Roundtable

Last week, I testified before a subcomittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee about mortgage servicing in bankruptcy. You can read the written testimony or watch a webcast. Both the Chair of the subcommittee, Senator Schumer, and the Ranking Member, Senator Sessions had some harsh words for the current ...

Every month, I try to post on the latest bankruptcy filing statistics using data provided by a private company, Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER). Recently, Jason Kilborn, a law professor at Chicago's John Marshall Law School, posted a comment asking why AACER's filing statistics were ...

The Association of American Law Schools Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services Program for the 2009 Annual Meeting (January in San Diego) has announced its topic: Does Modern Financial Institution Regulation Work? Reflections on Deregulation and Internationalization of Supervisory Standards. The program will consider these, and other, questions:� ...

The Credit Slips bloggers thank Judge Eugene Wedoff, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, for his participation as a guest blogger last week. His posts identified a number of important consumer bankruptcy issues, including student loans, the means test, and the potential of rule-making ...

All my credit and debit cards state on the back above the signature specimen block "Not Valid Unless Signed". I'm curious as to what exactly that means. If I make a purchase with an unsigned card, could it possibly absolve me of liability for the purchase price? ...

In a February post to Credit Slips, Katie Porter pointed out a recurring problem for U.S. debtors trying to deal with mortgage defaults through a Chapter 13 plan.� They can make all of the payments needed to cure their pre-bankruptcy defaults and all of the principal, interest, and escrow ...

Student loan debt in the U.S. is a growing problem, with college students graduating with an average debt load of nearly $20,000 as of 2006.� In my last post, I pointed out a recent opinion suggesting a bankruptcy approach that might help students with these loans, even though ...

Yesterday, the President signed into law H.R. 5715, the “Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008.”� The law responds to a perceived liquidity crisis in student lending by allowing government purchases of privately-issued student loan portfolios, so that the lenders will have funds to re-lend. ...

We're starting to see the bankruptcy ripple effect of the housing crisis beyond the housing and financial services industry. Now municipalities are being forced to declare bankruptcy because property tax revenue has dried up while foreclosures have imposed significant strains on municipal resources.

While moral ...

Elizabeth Warren draws our attention to an astonishing example of banking industry chutzpah--claiming preemption protection against state foreclosure laws. Not only has no one ever historically believed that state foreclose law was preempted; the OCC's preemption reg's specifically carve out state debt collection law from preemption. There's ...