BOMBSHELL: CFPB Moves to Allow Class-Action Lawsuits Against Financial Firms

This is a huge deal -- binding arb. clauses have been a major vehicle for big banks and other financial companies to basically disenfranchise consumers of legal process, and thus, steamroll and rip them off more generally. They are, essentially, adhesion contracts (i.e., you have no power to influence, let alone re-negotiate the contract, because they're all doing the same thing). Of course, Trump and many Republicans will try to kill this -- even though we're really talking about bread-and-butter rights and market machinery, and putting a force back into play that could significantly lessen the burden of rules-based regulation...

For more color on this, see the following excerpt:

To get beyond the anecdotal, The New York Times assembled its own database of arbitrations in a series of articles in 2015 that showed few people ever go to arbitration.

In financial disputes, the numbers are particularly startling. In its investigation, The Times found that between 2010 and 2014, only 505 consumers -- a fraction of the tens of millions of Americans whose financial contracts have arbitration clauses -- went to arbitration over disputes of $2,500 or less....

By banning class actions, companies essentially squashed challenges to practices that ranged from predatory lending and wage theft to sexual discrimination and medical malpractice.

Among the class actions derailed over the years by arbitration was a case brought by Citigroup customers who had accused the bank of tricking them into insurance that they were never eligible to use. In another, a group of merchants challenged American Express over high processing fees...