This is Alan White's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Alan White's activity
Join Now!
Already a member? Sign In
Alan White
Recent Activity
Reflections on the foreclosure crisis 10th anniversary
Before it was the global financial crisis, we called it the subprime crisis. The slow, painful recovery, and the ever-widening income and wealth inequality, are the results of policy choices made before and after the crisis. Before 2007, legislators and... Continue reading
Posted Dec 3, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
3
American Bar Association: exempt lawyers from FDCPA
The American Bar Association, at the urging of its debt collection lawyer members, is supporting HR 5082, which would partly exempt lawyers from the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Misrepresenting the bill as a technical clarification, the ABA is throwing... Continue reading
Posted Nov 19, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
For-profit college chain files (for receivership)
Image
Education Corporation of America filed a legal action in federal district court last week claiming financial distress, seeing to enjoin its creditors and restructure its debt. Sounds like Chapter 11, right? But no. ECA can't file a bankruptcy petition, because... Continue reading
Posted Oct 22, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Trump socialism and housing finance
Image
Various tax law scholars have commented on the tax fraud allegations in the recent New York Times story. Equally important is the story's reminder that our housing finance system, and the real estate fortunes it has spawned, have depended for... Continue reading
Posted Oct 15, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
4
More on PSLF fail
The US Education Department is assigning the complex task of monitoring the employment and the on-time payments of Public Service Loan Forgiveness aspirants to its worst-performing servicer. USED has contracted with servicing company FedLoan, affiliate of the Pennsylvania Higher Education... Continue reading
Posted Oct 10, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
Million public servants counting on broken PSLF program
Image
This week we learn from the GAO that more than 1 million public servants have applied to certify their work and their student loan payments as qualifying for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The number seems to be growing by about... Continue reading
Posted Sep 29, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
Public Service Loan Forgiveness Fail
20,521 applications rejected as ineligible. 96 borrowers approved. Those are the early results for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. PSLF promised student borrowers with federal Direct Loans who worked in qualifying public service jobs that they would have their... Continue reading
Posted Sep 21, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
Trump Administration's Student Loan Policy
Image
voanews Student loan debt has jumped from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in the last 5 years. The Education Department's official default rates seriously understate the share of young borrowers who default, or are not able to repay their loans.... Continue reading
Posted Sep 10, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
Trump Administration's Student Loan Policy
Image
Student loan debt has jumped from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in the last 5 years. The Education Department's official default rates voanews seriously understate the share of young borrowers who default, or are not able to repay their loans.... Continue reading
Posted Sep 10, 2018 at CL&P Blog
Comment
0
The Lexis privacy policy is less cavalier about sharing data with government enforcement agencies. Lexis will share personal data to "meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or other legal obligation." The Westlaw data sharing language is quoted in the article.
Toggle Commented Aug 22, 2018 on Westlaw: A Digital Deportation Machine? at Credit Slips
Westlaw: A Digital Deportation Machine?
Lawyers and legal academics may be surprised to learn that Thomson Reuters, owners of the Westlaw electronic law library, sells its data to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, and reserves the right in its privacy policy to share browsing... Continue reading
Posted Aug 19, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Trump’s Bank Regulators
ProPublica’s new web site “Trump Town” tracks political appointees across federal agencies. In light of the president’s promises to “drain the swamp”, it is interesting to peruse some of the Treasury Department appointees responsible for bank regulation. I previously wrote... Continue reading
Posted Apr 13, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
0
Counting the millions of evictions
Image
The Eviction Lab, a project led by sociologist Matthew Desmond (author of Evicted), have performed the invaluable and impressive task of gathering landlord-tenant eviction records from every county in the nation for the past 16 years. The sobering results, released... Continue reading
Posted Apr 7, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
0
The underutilized student loan bankruptcy discharge
A common misconception is that student loans are never dischargeable in bankruptcy. There is a bankruptcy discharge exception for some qualified student loans and educational benefit repayment obligations. The discharge exception does not, however, apply to all loans made to... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
1
Fed chair Powell to Congress - make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy
Image
Coverage of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's Congressional testimony highlighted his optimism about economic growth and its implications for future interest rate hikes. Less widely covered were his brief remarks on the student loan debt crisis. Citing the macroeconomic drag... Continue reading
Posted Mar 10, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
0
Preempting the states: US Ed to shield debt collectors from consumer protection
As if the power to garnish wages without going to court, seize federal income tax refunds and charge 25% collection fees weren't enough, debt collectors have now persuaded the Education Department to free them from state consumer protection laws when... Continue reading
Posted Feb 28, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
0
The Student Loan Sweatbox
Image
Student loan debt is growing more rapidly than borrower income. The similarity to the trend in home loan debt leading to the subprime mortgage bubble has been widely noted. Student loan debt in 1990 represented about 30% of a college... Continue reading
Posted Feb 26, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
3
Letting the Money Changers Back in the Temple
Image
Golden Valley Lending, Inc. is a payday lender that charges 900% interest on consumer loans sold over the internet. Golden Valley relies on the dubious legal dodge of setting up shop on an Indian reservation and electing tribal law in... Continue reading
Posted Feb 12, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Student loans - the debt collector contracts
Image
Twelve senators have just written to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos questioning why the Education Department continues to award lucrative contracts to debt collection firms, and criticizing the seriously misaligned incentives embedded in those contracts. While most federal student loan borrowers... Continue reading
Posted Feb 9, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Student loans - the other debt crisis
Image
Brookings Institute 2018 In a low unemployment economy, an entire generation is struggling, and millions are failing, to repay student loan debt. As many as 40% of ALL borrowers recently graduating are likely to default over the life of their... Continue reading
Posted Jan 26, 2018 at Credit Slips
Comment
3
Trump's Bank Regulators: More Swamp Creatures
Image
Following his appointment of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, the President has nominated Joseph Otting, former CEO of OneWest Bank, to be the chief federal bank regulator as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The OCC... Continue reading
Posted Aug 2, 2017 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Foreclosure Crisis Update
As the subprime foreclosure crisis grinds down slowly (there are still roughly 3 million pre-crisis subprime mortgages outstanding, many of them delinquent), and the HAMP program sunsets, the time has come to appraise the total damage done. In the ten... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2017 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
$45 Million for Stay Violations
How much in punitive damages is enough to punish unlawful conduct and deter its repetition? $45 million was one bankruptcy court's opinion, in the case of a wrongful home foreclosure and eviction in knowing violation of the automatic stay. The... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2017 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
How to think about banks
Banking is not an industry; banking is not the real economy. The big banks especially are economic and political behemoths that remain unpopular and poorly understood in the popular imagination. Opinion polls show voters favor breaking them up, and some... Continue reading
Posted Nov 12, 2016 at Credit Slips
Comment
2
Having done the legal coding in a number of coauthored empirical studies of various laws, and collaborated with statisticians, I heartily endorse Adam's point. Here is another example of a seriously flawed study based on misunderstanding the legal environment variables: http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2015/04/fast-foreclosures-slow-foreclosures.html.
Toggle Commented Oct 24, 2016 on Are Consumer Protection Regulations Harming the Middle Class? at Credit Slips
Subscribe to Alan White’s Recent Activity
0 Favorites
Blogs and Sites
Around The Web