Vega Economics was retained by the Office of the New York State Attorney General to support Dr. James Wilcox from UC Berkeley Hass Business School in a high-profile case related to consumer debt judgment in the state of New York. An established expert in monetary policy, banking, and consumer finance, Dr. Wilcox has previously held positions as an economist in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
The case arises from a New York state statute that lowered the statutory post-judgment interest rate on consumer debt judgments from nine percent to two percent. Plaintiffs, who are three credit unions in the state of New York, seek to challenge the constitutionality of the statue and to certify a putative class, alleging that the statue harms them financially and interferes with their reasonable investment-backed expectations.
In his report, Dr. Wilcox explained that consumer judgment recovery is highly uncertain and that creditors generally do not consider post-judgment interest rate an important factor in their lending decisions. He further showed that the statute’s impact on the Plaintiffs’ expected recovery of their outstanding consumer judgments is negligible, compared to their income and assets. He further demonstrated that, contrary to their claims, Plaintiffs’ experts failed to show the economic impact of the statute is significant.
Vega supported Dr. Wilcox in document review, data analysis, and deposition preparation. Vega continues to support Dr. Wilcox in this case as needed.
Dr. Wilcox's research interests include Federal Reserve policies and interest rates, banks’ lending, consumer attitudes and spending, credit unions, Islamic banking, and nonfinancial corporations’ internal capital markets. Wilcox originated Fannie Mae’s monthly Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI). He formerly served as the Chief Economist at the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, as a senior economist for monetary policy and macroeconomics at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and as an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, all in Washington D.C.
