It’s National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW)! Federal, state, local, and nonprofit consumer protection agencies and organizations are making extra efforts to promote consumer awareness.
First I have to get out of my system thoughts of Tom Lehrer’s song, National Brotherhood Week:
Step up and shake the hand/Of someone you can’t stand . . .
It’s only for a week so have no fear/Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.
But to get back on message, of particular interest to Credit Slips readers is this part of the mission of consumer protection described on the NCPW website:
"Financial Fraud Scams: American consumers owe a whopping $11.31 trillion dollars in debt and are behind on paying about $1.01 trillion of that amount. Mortgages, student loans, and credit cards account for a large portion of that debt. Consumers are often haunted with huge monthly payments, and fraudsters take advantage of that with debt relief scams, tax scams, and other financial fraud scams. Scams target individuals who are in financial distress, but they fail to fulfill their promises, and typically leave consumers worse off than when they started."
Let me say that Lauren Willis has done a great job on this site recently taking us, patiently and painstakingly, through the many problems with the idea that disclosure can be refined into a digital juggernaut to protect consumers. See here and here and here.