It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of the Dodd-Frank-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), mostly because I believe it will not be good for consumers. So let me acknowledge an instance in which the agency is attempting to do something good.
One thing I dislike more than the CFPB is the practice of many state and local governments to use their “abandoned” property laws to steal the remaining value of a consumer’s gift card. Here’s how it often works: Say your favorite aunt gives you an Amazon gift card for your birthday. Now you don’t know what you want to use it for, so you put it in a drawer in your house. If you leave it there for more than two years—even considering that it is in your house (that is, in your actual possession)—but you don’t use it, states like Maine consider it “abandoned” and force the merchant (in this case Amazon) who issued it to transfer its outstanding value to the government. If that’s not theft, I don’t know what is.
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