This book is a guide to purposes, strengths, and weaknesses of disclosures as consumer protections in common financial transactions such as loans, deposits, and consumer leases. It focuses on
the federal Truth in Lending Act but also includes discussion of a variety of other federal disclosure statutes designed to protect consumers in their financial relationships. It comes at a
time when federal financial consumer protection policy in the financial area is again a matter of intense public scrutiny and debate.
The book reviews the theory, evidence, background, and legal development of Truth in Lending and the other federal financial disclosure requirements to arrive at principles that would improve
these laws and help avoid repeating the history of often dysfunctional reform measures undertaken in the past.
Because of the importance of public policy issues surrounding use of disclosures as consumer protections, the intended audience includes anyone interested in these issues, not only specialists
who spend much of their time focused on them. For this reason, the work avoids academic jargon and the mathematics that is the modern language of economics. It also examines the psychological,
sociological, historical, and especially legal traditions that go into fully understanding what has led to the demand for better disclosures for consumers and to what they have become today.
Despite a need to outline and review prior difficulties with disclosure laws, the book remains optimistic that disclosures will continue to be an important means of consumer protection and that
future reforms can improve their effectiveness and lower their regulatory costs and burden.
