NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tag Archives: Consumer Protection

Senate *finally* confirms Richard Cordray as Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief

Excerpt: After months of sense­less delay, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate has final­ly con­firmed for­mer Ohio Attor­ney Gen­er­al Richard Cor­dray to serve as the Direc­tor of the Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau (CFPB) orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived by Eliz­a­beth War­ren and cre­at­ed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010. By a vote of sev­en­ty-one to twen­ty-nine, the Sen­ate agreed […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Public Service
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Stay home and sleep in this weekend: The Black Friday madness isn’t worth it (literally!)

Excerpt: This week­end is Thanks­giv­ing week­end, tra­di­tion­al­ly one of the longest week­ends of the year (owing to Thanks­giv­ing always falling on a Thursday). It’s also tra­di­tion­al­ly the begin­ning of the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son, and is thus a very impor­tant time of year for retailers. Since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, major retail chains have gone to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Occupy offshoot launches “Rolling Jubilee”

Excerpt: Last week an off­shoot of Occu­py Wall Street launched Rolling Jubilee, a new project billed as “a bailout for the 99%”. The project, which has been gen­er­at­ing con­sid­er­able inter­est in the finan­cial press, aims to help out ordi­nary Amer­i­cans by pur­chas­ing and abol­ish­ing their debt. It’s a nov­el idea: Banks sell debt for pen­nies on the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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After Internet outcry, Verizon backtracks, drops plans to charge $2 “convenience fee”

Excerpt: Chalk up anoth­er vic­to­ry for the Inter­net: Ver­i­zon Wire­less has decid­ed it will not insti­tute the fee for online or tele­phone sin­gle pay­ments that was announced ear­li­er this week. The com­pa­ny made the deci­sion in response to cus­tomer feed­back about the plan, which was designed to improve the effi­cien­cy of those trans­ac­tions. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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AT&T throws in the towel, abandons scheme to buy T‑Mobile from Deutsche Telekom

Excerpt: For once, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors have done their job and stood up to Wall Street: AT&T said late on Mon­day after­noon that it had with­drawn its $39 bil­lion takeover bid for T‑Mobile USA, acknowl­edg­ing that it could not over­come oppo­si­tion from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to cre­at­ing the nation’s biggest cell­phone ser­vice provider. The com­pa­ny said in […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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A day of action: Progressives across the country use Bank Transfer Day to go bankless

Excerpt: As reg­u­lar read­ers know, we at NPI have been long­time cham­pi­ons of mem­ber-owned cred­it unions, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of Sep­tem­ber 2008 and the sub­se­quent bank bailout. NPI’s staff and board belong indi­vid­u­al­ly to dif­fer­ent cred­it unions, and NPI itself is a cred­it union member. NPI became part of Amer­i­ca’s cred­it union move­ment well […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Banks drop plans to charge debit card fees

Excerpt: Bank of Amer­i­ca, acknowl­edg­ing that its lat­est attempt to shake more mon­ey out of its cus­tomers’ pock­ets was destroy­ing good­will and hurt­ing rev­enue, announced today that it was can­cel­ing its plans to impose a $5 month­ly fee for deb­it card use, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of JPMor­gan Chase, Wells Far­go, Sun­Trust, and Regions, which have […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Netflix finally listens to its members, drops plans to spin off DVDs-by-mail as Qwikster

Excerpt: Net­flix is stay­ing Netflix. The com­pa­ny announced this morn­ing that it was drop­ping its ill-con­ceived plans to spin out its DVDs-by-mail into a sep­a­rate web­site called Qwik­ster, after weeks of get­ting irate emails and phone calls from its members. Dear Mem­ber: It is clear that for many of our mem­bers two web­sites would make things […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Bank of America announces $5 monthly penalty for debit card use

Excerpt: Bank of Amer­i­ca Bank of Greed, one of the largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world, announced today that it will begin charg­ing cus­tomers who use a deb­it card tied to their check­ing account a $5 month­ly penal­ty. (BofA is call­ing it a fee, but of course it’s real­ly a penal­ty). BofA is plan­ning to intro­duce […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Netflix announces its DVDs-by-mail business will now be called “Qwikster”

Excerpt: Two months after it announced that it was sep­a­rat­ing DVD rentals and stream­ing into sep­a­rate plans (and auto­mat­i­cal­ly rais­ing prices for cus­tomers who did not act to can­cel one or the oth­er), Net­flix CEO Reed Hast­ings has final­ly admit­ted the com­pa­ny did a poor job han­dling the announcement. In a blog post and in a […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Bank of America unilaterally amends deposit agreements for Pacific Northwest customers

Excerpt: Finan­cial “ser­vices” giant Bank of Amer­i­ca, which has been stag­ger­ing through 2011 under the weight of bad debt inher­it­ed from acqui­si­tions like Coun­try­wide, has begun inform­ing cus­tomers in Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho that it is chang­ing the deposit agree­ments for per­son­al accounts in both states, NPI has learned. The changes will take effect on Octo­ber 14th, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Netflix subjects customers to “price change”; opt-out required to avoid paying 60% more

Excerpt: Yes­ter­day, Net­flix sent out an email to its mil­lions of cus­tomers dis­clos­ing that it has decid­ed to raise its prices, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly for new cus­tomers and effec­tive in Sep­tem­ber for exist­ing cus­tomers. The announce­ment, also post­ed to Net­flix’s blog and its Face­book page around the same time, has since drawn tens of thou­sands of com­ments, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Costco to Washington State Legislature: “Have we got a deal for you…”

Excerpt: From: Costco To: Mem­bers, Wash­ing­ton State Legislature RE: Your finan­cial troubles Dear law­mak­ers, As one of Washington’s largest pub­licly-trad­ed com­pa­nies, Cost­co feels an oblig­a­tion to self­less­ly assist its state in weath­er­ing the ongo­ing fis­cal storm that has had such a dev­as­tat­ing impact on cit­i­zens and con­sumers alike. Last year the vot­ers of our state reject­ed […]
Written by:Steve
Categories:Economic Security, Humor & Satire, Policy Topics
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