Heartland Daily Podcast – Todd Zywicki: Pitfalls of Consumer-Minded Debt Collector Regulations

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Jesse Hathaway

Jesse Hathaway is the managing editor of the Budget & Tax News Heartland publication. Before joining the Heartland Institute, Hathaway worked for Media Trackers, a conservative non-profit news organization active in 5 states. His investigatory research has appeared in local, state, and national publications including The Daily Caller, Drudge Report, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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In this episode of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor Jesse Hathaway talks with Mercatus Center senior fellow Todd Zywicki. Zywicki’s new paper, “The Law and Economics of Consumer Debt Collection and Its Regulation,” examines the pitfalls of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s proposals to protect consumers from abuse by debt collection agencies.

Sketchy debt collection practices been mostly solved by existing regulations passed by state and federal government since the 1970s, Zywicki says, and consumer advocates are facing diminishing returns for their efforts to safeguard consumers.

Zywicki says poorly-considered regulations might have negative effects on the economy and on consumers, instead of helping consumers. Regulators should examine how existing debt collection rules can be updated for the digital age, he says, instead of piling on new rules on top of old ones.

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