OK, brace yourself: The US Senate just made it harder for Americans to sue banks.

I know, I know. I can hardly believe it either. But it’s true.

This all goes back to a ruling by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection that was posted to the Federal Register in July, passed into law on September 18th, and required compliance by March 19, 2018. Specifically, the rule states that:

“A provider shall not rely in any way on a pre-dispute arbitration agreement entered into after the date set forth in § 1040.5(a) with respect to any aspect of a class action that concerns any of the consumer financial products or services covered by § 1040.3, including to seek a stay or dismissal of particular claims or the entire action, unless and until the presiding court has ruled that the case may not proceed as a class action and, if that ruling may be subject to appellate review on an interlocutory basis, the time to seek such review has elapsed or such review has been resolved such that the case cannot proceed as a class action.”

Or, for those whose legalese is a bit rusty, the rule specifically prohibited the banksters from using fine print in contracts to stop customers from banding together in class action lawsuits. You know, in cases like, say, the Equifax debacle, where a credit monitoring company let sensitive personal information on as many as 143 million Americans fall into the hands of data thieves (oopsies!). As it turns out, Equifax had just such an anti-class action clause in their consumer contract until massive outrage made them remove it.

So this rule might have helped some of the more hapless victims of the financial vultures from falling into the fine-print trap and losing their ability to sue the bank when things go disastrously wrong.

…Unless the Senate stepped in and used the Clinton-era Congressional Review Act to overturn that ruling. But of course they would never do that, would they?

Find out all about how the Senate sided with the banksters yet again and what it really tells us about government “regulation” in this week’s edition of The Corbett Report Subscriber.

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