Consumer Law

New FTC Chair Testifies Before House on Consumer Credit Issues

By Deepak Gupta

by Deepak Gupta 

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommitee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection is holding a hearing this morning on "Consumer Credit and Debt: The Role of the Federal Trade Commission in Protecting the Public." Among other things, the hearing is exploring an issue I noted earlier this month: Whether the FTC's authority is too constrained to make it effective in fighting increasingly sophisticated and constantly evolving unfair and deceptive practices in the marketplace. Public Citizen's statement to the subcommittee discusses the agency's history of consumer credit regulation, existing authority for future regulation, and our proposed changes to FTC's authority. The witnesses include Jon Leibowitz, the new FTC chairman, James Tierney, Director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, co-bloggers Christopher Peterson (Utah Law) and Ira Rheingold (NACA), and Republican witness Bill Himpler, a lobbyist for the American Financial Services Association. You can watch the FTC chairman, who is testifying now, on CSPAN.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on March 24, 2009 (boomark / email).