Consumer Protection

Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children's clothing. The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable.

At its core, President Obama's overhaul of regulations for the financial industry seeks a fundamental change: Make the federal bureaucracy work for consumers, not just Wall Street. And Wall Street, not surprisingly, doesn't like it. Striking a populist tone, Obama complained in a White House speech Wednesday that average Americans were often baffled by such intricacies as the terms of credit cards, home loans and other financial products.

Since the beginning of the year, millions of credit card customers have been hit with higher interest rates -- in many cases from lenders that have received billions of dollars in bailout cash from taxpayers. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, responded last week with legislation that would impose a 15% cap on rates for all consumer loans, including plastic. And you know what? It just might work.

The Supreme Court opinion that drew the most praise last week from a proudly "progressive" constitutional law group was written by perhaps the court's staunchest conservative, Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas would have gone further than the court's liberals in a decision that allowed injured patients to sue drug makers. In a 24-page concurrence, he said the court should have declared that judges have no authority to void state consumer-protection laws based on "agency musings" from Washington.

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner plans to unveil proposed regulations today to combat the health insurance industry practice of dropping members with costly illnesses. Poizner's draft regulations would require insurers to write applications for coverage in plain English and allow applicants a "not sure" answer to questions about their preexisting medical conditions.

New federal protections for credit card users go into force today, but in advance of the tougher rules, banks have been raising fees and interest rates -- hoping to ensure that one of their historically most lucrative businesses remains that way. Since Congress approved the landmark credit card overhaul legislation last spring, many issuers of plastic have jacked up interest rates, switched accounts from fixed to variable rates, and raised annual...

Easy credit is great. Except when it's too easy. Millions of people are now in danger of losing their homes as a result of the meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market. But millions more face the prospect of financial ruin because of an even more ubiquitous problem: the danger of making only minimum payments on monthly credit card bills. Michelle Schimeck, 35, discovered this for herself after running up a combined balance of more than $20,000 on five credit cards.

The long arm of the law reaches only so far, according to a federal appeals court. In a win for consumers, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a San Clemente debt collection company could be sued for alleged overly aggressive tactics, even when the company is working on behalf of prosecutors. The appeals court ruled in a lawsuit against American Corrective Counseling Services Inc.

2Amid the tumult of the delivery room, Rohit and Geeta Jain were calm about one thing: Their new baby was sure to be a boy. Six months earlier, the Jains had spent more than $300 for a test that screened a minute quantity of Geeta's blood for traces of male DNA. The testing company said it was 95% accurate in determining the sex of a baby, even as early as the eighth week of pregnancy. After six hours in the delivery room, Rohit gaped as his wife gave birth to a daughter.

Moving to reverse decades of limited federal oversight, the Senate voted Thursday to make sweeping changes to the government's system of regulating toys, appliances and thousands of other household products. The 79-13 vote could lead to a major expansion of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and stiffer penalties for companies that manufacture or distribute hazardous products.