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The U.S. government should not allow companies to manipulate, trick, and otherwise abuse customers.

They shouldn't but they routinely do. The love to hide behind the fiction that many contracts are somehow not one sided and abusive because they are theoretically (though not really) optional.

It is shocking and extremely unpleasant to see how much dishonesty there is in U.S. advertising, and the extreme weakness of the U.S. government in preventing abuse.

Well, one party has been trying to do something about it, albeit meekly and in a pathetically limited way. The other party screams loudly that regulation is the devil no matter how sane the regulation might actually be and works tirelessly to permit companies to behave as badly as possible. End result is that we get screwed unless we are rich enough to fight the system.

Is that true? If the debt is in her name, how is he responsible for it?

Do you really want to know? Then you should read this for more information.

In the U.S. you are responsible for your spouse's debts when they die.

Example number 1299006 of why you should not take legal advice from /.

https://www.consumerfinance.go...

The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

If they want to have this happen they have to show how CONSUMERS are being harmed in some tangible (mostly financial) way. The mere fact that those companies have simply out competed their rivals is not sufficient and it's clear those companies have provided a lot of value whatever their flaws might be. None of those companies are monopolies or if they are they are extremely narrow ones. Amazon may be the big gorilla in ecommerce but they aren't a monopoly. Facebook may dominate social media but proving that harms consumers is going to be a tough argument.

Plus is it really realistic to call for regulation when the party that breaks out in hives whenever they hear the word controls both congress and the presidency? Never going to happen. This is the same party that seems to think net neutrality is some communist plot to reduce profits of big business. This is the same party that hasn't issued a single enforcement action out of the CFPB in over a year. Regulate? Not bloody likely.

Maybe you get your mortgages from Shady Joe's Instaloan Warehouse, but under those the Truth in Lending Act, closing disclosure forms have a standardized 5 page format. https://www.consumerfinance.go...

Have you never had a mortgage before? Closing costs alone can total upwards of $5,000, which isn't exactly a drop in the bucket.

Yes I have a mortgage. Lenders can't just tack on closing costs without telling you what they are. Also you can negotiate the costs. The seller and I split the cost. The seller didn't raise the price.

Mortgage closing costs

When you are buying a home you generally pay all of the costs associated with that transaction. However, depending on the contract or State law, the seller may end up paying for some of these costs. . .

Again how was the loan cost raised up because of bad purchases the lender made? A lender in question normally assesses each loan based on the particular case. In this story particularly, the supposed current owner of the debt wasn't the original lender but someone who later bought the debt. Some of these companies never made a loan themselves; they buy them as investments. How can they enforce higher costs on those that they bought the loans from?

Obama created the Consumer Finanical Protection Board (CFPB) and they are the agency that went after Well Fargo (after a banking employees union identified the problem).

Of course the republicans hate, hate, haaaaate the CFPB because congress can't neuter it like the way they neutered all other enforcement agencies - by starving them.

I can't think of a single organization that is currently doing more for the consumer than these guys

The FCC is doing some good, but the CFPB is doing more.

With mine I got the best results going through the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau as far as getting a response out of the company. Granted my state attorney general's office was very helpful to me as well. The only thing I got from the state department of commerce was a notification that they had opened an investigation into the debt collector but they are also the body in my state the regulates debt collectors so that should make life difficult for the debt collector.

I would have thought that you could have really put the screws to the debt collector as I believe that once they are notified in writing, especially with a cease and desist from an attorney, that if they do contact you the debt becomes legally uncollectable and you can basically tell the to piss off and sue for harassment at that point.

Personally I hate these companies as they are all dumb as fucking rocks as I frequently get called by debt collectors trying to collect credit card debt from the previous owner of my house who hasn't lived there for almost 14 years. Most are polite enough when I tell them they have lived there in 13 years but one would think that by checking the public records they would see they don't fucking live there. Those tend to be the reputable ones and they don't hide their identity on the phone. The somewhat questionable ones that insist I am lying to them I tell them that if they ever contact me again I will sue them for harassment as is my right as I am not the person they are looking for, and then there was the really shit ball one that I went full on scorched earth on.

Whoosh?

They didn't stop telecoms from merging either.

U.S. Moves to Block Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile
T-Mobile Antitrust Challenge Gives AT&T Little Recourse

They didn't stop any of the airline or bank mergers that we have seen since 2009.

US government seeks to block American-US Airways merger
U.S., Filing Suit, Moves to Block Airline Merger

They didn't reign in the massive control that the insurance industry has over the consumer (indeed they gave the industry more power)

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF MICHIGAN AND PHYSICIANS HEALTH PLAN OF MID-MICHIGAN ABANDON MERGER PLANS: Decision to Abandon Deal Follows Justice Department's Decision to Challenge the Acquisition
The Minimum Standards all Health Insurance Plans Sold on and Off the Exchange
Federal Insurance Office Act"
the 2010 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This seems highly unlikely given the pro-monopoly stance that...

U.S. Moves to Block Merger of 2 Theater Ad Companies
FTC Sues To Block Sysco-US Foods Merger
U.S. Sues to Block Big Beer Merger
3M Drops Avery Dennison Unit Buyout Amid Antitrust Worry

etc

File a complaint with them at: http://www.consumerfinance.gov.... Then the bank will need to respond. But this sort of the situation is why they were created.

Okay, your not helping yourself or anyone else like you think you are. I'm not writing this response for you personally, I'm writing it before other people follow your advice and get themselves in legal trouble.

You have rights if your a fraud victim and you should exercise them, which you haven't done. In order to protect yourself and your credit rating you have to file a fraud complaint and send it to the and credit agency and company.

If you don't do that the company can continue to report against your credit report and you can be sued by the company in the jurisdiction that they have on file and get a judgment against you. Without a fraud dispute the company has no way of knowing your right address and the fraudulent address will be used for the jurisdiction you are sued under. Once a judgment is issued against someone you can have your wages garnished, credit ruined, tax refunds seized and property sold at auction.

You'll have hell to get an judgment overturned that was issued in another jurisdiction and than your in a position of explaining why you couldn't be bothered to write a simple affidavit and mail it in. Someone following your advice could well get a judgment against them that they couldn't get rid of - even after proving they didn't take it out. With a lot of jurisdictions allowing people to be arrested in order to enforce payment of judgments your advice could well put someone in jail.

* Before I worked in IT I made a living performing large balance credit card fraud investigations ($5000+). I was the one of two people in a well known company that would track down situations like yours. Please stop giving legal advice when you haven't got the slightest clue what your talking about.

The problem is, how do you know whether the bank even uses that as a metric?

Institutions wouldn’t get this information straight from Facebook but would instead use one of the many smaller credit reporting agencies and if they make a negative decision based on this, they are required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act to disclose this to you. If that happens, the CRA is then required to provide you a copy of the report provided to the given company. They could try to lie and make up some other excuse but they wouldn’t get away with it many times before a pattern would emerge and they would open themselves up to huge lawsuits should they be caught doing it. It’s worth noting a lot of the smaller CRA’s have the same annual reporting requirements as do the big three and you can request a free report from them. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has a PDF that lists many of the smaller CRA’s and how you can contact them.

That said, I think that trying to plumb social networking information and deny credit is on par with redlining. It’s only started happening and I’ve heard of no legal challenges and I doubt the connections on any random social network can be completely separated from any of the factors that can’t be used to make credit decisions - race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age. IANAL, but it would seem just looking at it could greatly increase your risk for an ECOA lawsuit.

Here's your list: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201207_cfpb_list_consumer-reporting-agencies.pdf

Here's some why: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2222822/

I don't see it as particularly a public/private difference, but a difference of well-run and poorly-run organizations.

Assuming that the private sector is always efficient is wrong, because anyone who's worked in large private sector companies knows full well that it's not. For example, most of the "management consulting" industry shouldn't really exist, because it's entire reason for existing is so that some manager Smith can hire an outside firm to tell their boss that Smith's plan is better than Jones' plan and thus secure Smith that promotion. One of the things that's becoming clear in corporate governance is that an employee of a corporation faced with making a decision that benefits themselves versus a decision that benefits the organization will pick themselves almost every time.

Assuming that the public sector is always inefficient is also wrong. There are public agencies that are ridiculously efficient at what they do. For example, the administrative overhead of Social Security is approximately 0.9%. The VA gets more bang for the health care buck than Medicaid, Medicare, and private medical insurance. The CFPB is doing a pretty good job on a shoestring budget. The National Park Service costs about $3 billion a year, which sounds like a lot but is actually about $10 per American, and in return it serves 280 million visitors a year, which certainly seems like a pretty good value.

More to the point, assuming the public sector inherently sucks means we stop rewarding those public servants that do a really good job, which will reduce their motivation and pretty much guarantee that they'll do it badly. And assuming the private sector inherently is efficient means we stop holding private organizations accountable when they screw up. Doing either is really stupid.

Only 137 entries in the database at the moment, evidently. Probably only showing what's been reported via the site itself, at least at this point, via the complain submission section http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

Something interesting is that as part of the 'Submit a Complaint' there is a whistleblower function:
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/the-cfpb-wants-you-to-blow-the-whistle-on-lawbreakers/

Only 137 entries in the database at the moment, evidently. Probably only showing what's been reported via the site itself, at least at this point, via the complain submission section http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

Something interesting is that as part of the 'Submit a Complaint' there is a whistleblower function:
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/the-cfpb-wants-you-to-blow-the-whistle-on-lawbreakers/

No, you're completely wrong, this is not the current policy of the United Stated federal government.

It's true that when a US government employee develops software, as part of his official duties, it is not subject to copyright in the US (with a few tiny exceptions). But that doesn't mean it actually gets released to the public; in almost all cases it is never released to the public. (Sometimes it does, like expect and Security-Enhanced Linux, but most of the time it doesn't). Even more importantly: most software developed using government funding is developed by contractors, not by government employees, in in most cases the rule about government employees doesn't apply anyway.

For the details of when software funded by the US government can be released as OSS, see this:"Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government" by Dr. David A. Wheeler (me), Journal of Software Technology, February 2011, Vol. 14, Number 1.

Now it's true that a few small parts of the US government do have such a policy. In particular, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's source code policy does share the code with the public at no charge by default.

I do agree that when "we the people" pay for the development of software, then by default "we the people" should get it (unless there's a good reason for an exception, e.g., it's a classified weapon system). Sounds like a good idea. It's even a good idea for the government itself, because it will greatly enable competition for future work (building on past work) and reduce redevelopment (because it'll be easier to find previously-developed stuff). But that's something people need to press for... don't assume it's already happened.

Ask for "release government-funded software as OSS by default" - don't assume it's already happened.

Where does it say in the constitution that congress is responsible for being a consumer or even privacy watchdog? Isn't that the responsibility of the FTC Bereau of Consumer Protection, CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), the newly created Department of Consumer Protection or the CPSC (Consumer Protection Safety Commission)? See below for links.. these are separate organizations of government.

I think the congressional hearings are far, far too used. I watch as ignorant senators call up Goldman Sachs or Toyota and grill them on practices and safety. Meanwhile, they can't pass a budget for the bloated, ignorant government to run on. Senators act like royalty, yet they're the ones trading on insider information and often the ones who caused the problem with restrictive laws or regulations in the first place.

The gut instinct of all of us, when we see an article like this,l is to say, "My privacy is important!" and to be a little thankful for the government to be the oversight when we feel powerless, *yet* its the government who is tapping out phones, e-mails and electronic communication illegally. Am I the only one who recognizes how bad things have become??!

-- Ragetech

Links:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/consumer.shtm - FTC
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/ - CFPB
http://www.ct.gov/DCP/site/default.asp - Department of Consumer Protection
http://www.cpsc.gov/ - CPSC

About as surprised as the agency that was voted for by congress and given funds by congress as a response to the loan practices that caused the housing bubble to collapse in 2008, has no direction or head, and is as powerless as ever.

You voted for republicans? You got your wish. Fuck you for buying our stuff, too bad if it has poison in it, affects your health long term, or we are dumping in your favorite river. Fuck you if what we say is different from what we do. Fuck you, because buyer beware is the Republican belief.

http://www.cpsc.gov/
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/
None of which do shit because the laws are such that they are terrible.