St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Professor Jeff Sovern co-authored an essay in The American Prospect, Placing Consumers at the Forefront of Relief Efforts, with Hofstra Law School professor Norman I. Silber.

Jeff Sovern

For the next stimulus package, rather than sending tens of millions of checks to consumers, Congress would do better to strike at the economic crisis by using the existing lending mechanism, right in front of us, that more than three-quarters of us already possess: credit cards. We think that Congress should pass legislation which allow banks on a monthly basis to bill the government for, say, 70 percent of the interest charges on those cards, while requiring banks to defer monthly credit card payments for all consumer cardholders for the length of the coronavirus catastrophe, perhaps as long as six months. We suggest that the benefit be capped at something like $10,000 per consumer as those charges accrue.

Sovern also served as a commenter at the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice’s Second Annual Consumer Law Scholars Conference on March 5-6. In addition, one of his blog posts was quoted by Law.com in a January 28 article while another was discussed in an industry publication with the headline, “Law Professor Makes Clever Suggestion To Help CFPB Understand Time-Barred Debt Disclosures.”