Author: Nathalie Martin

  • New Study Tells Inside Story of how Local Communities use Ordinances to say ‘Enough’ to Payday Lenders

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    Nathalie Martin

    Robert Mayer of the University of Utah and I just finished an 18-month study of community approaches to controlling payday lending . The study concludes with ten lessons communities can use to pass similar ordinances on any subject matter. In The Power of Community Action: Anti-Payday Loan Ordinances in Three Metropolitan Areas, we document how local communities positively organize to control payday lending in their jurisdictions and thereby create important legal change. Our whole report as well as an executive summery can be found  here. 

    We hope this study will galvanize local communities and show them how they can make a difference in changing the law and society as a whole, Payday loans, which are borrowed against future paychecks and can carry interest rates of 400 percent or more, often strip wealth from society’s most economically vulnerable individuals and communities. These loan outlets now outnumber all McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks and Walgreens stores combined. In states where legislative controls are weak — and in the absence of federal regulations — some local governments have stepped forward to address the problems caused by high-cost, predatory payday loans.The researchers traveled to three regions — Silicon Valley in Northern California; Greater Metropolitan Dallas in Texas; and Greater Salt Lake City in Utah — to see how local entities have produced numerous ordinances aimed at halting the spread of payday lending. The locations were chosen for their diverse demographic, cultural, political and legal characteristics.

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  • Conference and Call for Papers: Consumer Protection and Economic Development, 25 Years of the International Association of Consumer Law

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    Nathalie Martin

    A Conference celebrating the 25th year of International Association FO Consumer law will be held July 16 to 19, in Porto Alegre (UFRGS), Brazil. The The purpose of the Conference is to provide a forum where leading international scholars, practitioners, representatives of the consumer organization, public authorities and business representatives can join to present and discuss together the fundaments, the challenges and the future of consumer protection worldwide.

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  • Learn about Teaching Consumer Law in Beautiful Santa Fe May 20-21, 2016

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    Nathalie Martin

    Pueblo acrhitecure ins anta feOn May 20-21st, the Center for Consumer Law at the University of Houston Law Center will present “TEACHING CONSUMER LAW IN OUR POPULAR CULTURE AND SOCIAL MEDIA.” Sponsored by the University of New Mexico School of Law, this is the only Conference in the world dedicated to the teaching of consumer law.

    Snow in santa fe

    This year’s Conference features 25 speakers, including the respected U.S. consumer law scholars, as well as presenters from nine other countries. Topics include discussions of new and innovative teaching techniques, substantive consumer law updates, a detailed discussion of the CFPB, empirical studies on consumer law issues, and numerous presentations of consumer law in other countries, such as Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, the EU, Nigeria, Denmark, and China.
     
    The Conference will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the most unique cities in American. A Conference brochure and registration form will be available shortly. In the meantime, please save the date. To view the tentative schedule and register , click here.
     
    Richard Alderman and I look forward to seeing you in Santa Fe.

     

     

     

     

     

  • How the Disappearance of Locally-Owned Banks Hurts Rural Economic Development

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    Nathalie Martin

    In preparation for some upcoming projects with sociologists, including my new collaborator Rob Mayer (Utah) and on another project, Alan Burton (UNM Sociology professors and UNM law student), I am beefing up on my sociology research. Alan directed me to a recent article, Restructuring the Financial Industry: The Disappearance of Locally-Owned Traditional Financial Services in Rural America. This article explains how the loss of small banks in rural America has negatively affected economic development, which has in turn reduced opportunities for rural communities to increase income, reduce poverty, decrease out-immigration, and reduce crime rates.

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  • Welcome Matthew Bruckner

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    Nathalie Martin

    Today we welcome Matthew Bruckner as a guest blogger. Professor Bruckner teaches at Howard University School of law. I first became acquainted with him through his wonderful scholarship applying virtue theory to bankruptcy law. He teaches a variety of business and commercial law courses, including contracts and bankruptcy. Professor Bruckner has previously taught at St. John’s University School of Law and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. His academic interests center on commercial bankruptcy issue and his most recent scholarship focuses on how to reduce the cost of professional representation in corporate bankruptcy cases.

    Prior to law teaching, Professor Bruckner was an attorney practicing in the areas of bankruptcy, bank regulatory, M&A, and other general transactional matters with Allen & Overy, LLP. Professor Bruckner also undertook a number of pro bono engagements for the Public International Law and Policy Group, where he led a team working on comparative constitutional law issues. After leaving Allen & Overy, Professor Bruckner clerked for the Honorable Allen L. Gropper of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. In a prior life, he was a stagehand at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

    Welcome Matthew!

  • Nostradamus-Style Predictions for Consumers in 2015

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    Nathalie Martin

    First some easy ones you all know:

    1. The stock market will drop, perhaps precipitously, making now great time to rebalance retirement portfolios.

    2. The price of gas will inch up and in the meantime, more states will add a little gas tax here and there to quietly fill empty coffers.

    On Mortgage Lending:

    3. There will be more low rate, “no closing costs” home refinancings available to good credit risks, as lenders try to figure out what to do with themselves. Not much of a spoiler here, since this is already happening.

    4. More lenders will be answering the phones when borrowers want to settle up their mortgages. Lenders will be cutting the red tape that is costing them a fortune. Also, more lenders will be settling pending home foreclosure litigation. Something is better than nothing, some might be thinking. 

    5. Cases that don’t settle will result in more large judgments against lenders, in part because lenders did not do some of the things mentioned above all along.

    On High -Cost Lending:

    6. The CFPB will announce its long-awaited payday lending rules, which will apply to all high-cost loans, including payday loans, title loans, and high-cost installment loans.  These new rules will go a long way (though perhaps not all the way) to curbing high-cost lending abuses and protecting consumers from the debt trap. After all, the bureau is called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Lenders will not like the rules much and may even sue over them but they won’t have a high-cost leg to stand on.

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  • Foreclosure News: Who Gets to Decide Whether a State is a Judicial Foreclosure State or a Non-Judicial Foreclosure State, Legislatures or the Mortgage Industry?

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    Nathalie Martin

    Apparently some mortgage lenders feel they can make this change unilaterally. Big changes are afoot in the process of granting a home mortgage, which could have a significant impact on a homeowner’s ability to fight foreclosure. In many states in the Unites States (including but not limited to Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin), a lender must go to court and give the borrower a certain amount of notice before foreclosing on his or her home. Now the mortgage industry is quickly and quietly trying to change this, hoping no one will notice. The goal seems to be to avoid those annoying court processes and go right for the home without foreclosure procedures. This change is being attempted by some lenders simply by asking borrowers to sign deeds of trust rather than mortgages from now on.

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  • Another Tribute to Jean Braucher: On the Lighter Side

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    Nathalie Martin

    Bob’s post made me cry. Jean was an incredible scholar and colleague. She also had a fun, light side that I will forever cherish, and that I share here. 

    I met Jean about 18 years ago through my mentor Bill Woodward (formerly of Temple University Law, now at Santa Clara Law), Jean and Bill were very close academic friends and he thought Jean and I would also hit it off.  He was right. From the very beginning, she helped me with everything from casebook selection to choosing (and negotiating) my job here. Not too long after I moved to New Mexico Law, Jean moved to the Arizona Law faculty. Bill used to ask me “do you ever see Jean out there?” as if we’d now run into each other regularly, since we lived just 7 hours apart by car. The west is a big place, for all your easterners out there, but actually, Bill was on to something. Whatever the reason, Jean herself became a mentor and close friend.

    We organized a few conferences together, most recently at Washington and Lee in 2011 with Jim Hawkins (Houston law Center). Wherever we were, we always stayed up late, drinking and gossiping and just having fun. One year at Richard Alderman’s Conference in Houston, my husband said “that’s it, no more hanging out with Jean Braucher” (Mary Spector you were also implicated)

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  • Local and State Treasurers Can Build Wealth in Struggling Communities

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    Nathalie Martin

    Sometimes you can beat the door down with efforts to get Federal and State officials to tackle problems, but at the end of the day, locals can best get the job done, quietly and quickly. A story in Monday’s New York Times bears this out.  For example, San Francisco City Treasure Jose Cisneros noticed that families who finally took advantage the of the earned income credit, the country’s largest public benefit program, often had no bank accounts in which to deposit their refunds. This meant losing a portion of this important public benefit to check cashers and others.

    Because of this problem, Treasurer Cisneros started a program called Bank On, that helps people on the financial fringes open bank accounts and develop credit histories. This model has spread across the country, leading the Treasury Department to conclude that Bank On has “great potential” to “create a nationwide initiative that attends to the needs of underserved families and works to eradicate financial instability throughout the country.” In 2010, Mr. Cisneros also started Kindergarten to College, a program that automatically opened a bank account with $50 ($100 for low-income families) for every kindergartner in public schools. The city pays for the administration and initial deposits, while corporate, foundation and private donations provide matching money to encourage families to save more. His office even figured out how to open bank accounts for thousands of children without social security numbers.

    These and similar effort have now been replicated in more than 100 cities, showing that even mundane public races might make a big difference in the health and well-being of citizens, if not the entire U.S. economy.

  • Is a 36% Cap Radical?

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    Nathalie Martin

    I was pleased to see today’s New York Times editorial entitled “A Rate Cap for All Consumer Loans.”  It created a very public description of an industry indiscretion involving loaning money to the military at over 36%. Those loans are illegal because a federal law makes it so, a law that passed with broad and deep bipartisan support because trapping military personnel in high-cost loans interferes with military readiness and thus threatens national security. This editorial, not in some fringe publication, but rather the New York Times, argues that we all deserve the same protections from high cost loans.  I agree (in this recent article), and think the time is right to start listening to people and not industry on this topic.

    Is a federal 36% cap radical? Historically, 36% would seem heinously high. Plus, if 36% is radical, why does much of the U.S.‘s eastern seaboard's state law forbid consumer loans with interest rates of over 36%? Are these radical states? The public favors a hard cap, over and over again in every study,  regardless of politics. Hearing politicians support consumer loans with 500% or even 1,000% interest, is so mysterious it makes me want to look at their list of campaign contributors.  Remember, real people over political contributions. We elect politicians and pay their salaries. In turn, they speak for us. Do you like what they are saying?