Posts tagged as:

payday loans

Payday loans prove irresistable, even to those who know better

July 28, 2009

Payday loans are small, short-term, high-interest loans. Most are less than $400, with a term of two weeks or less. In exchange, the consumer generally pays $15 for every $100 borrowed, or a 360% APR. (Even high-interest credit cards generally charge less than 30% APR.)
Most consumers roll over the loan several times, incurring an additional [...]

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Congress thinks a 391% APR is a-okay

April 9, 2009

Last week, the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a hearing on H.R. 1214, the Payday Loan Reform Act.  AFFIL and our Partners are calling this the “Payday Lender Protection Act.”  It’s the first bill that AFFIL has ever officially opposed (PDF link).  Unfortunately, the bill enjoys a lot of support and [...]

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Payday loans under fire in the Minnesota legislature

March 18, 2009

There are two bills (HF0914 & HF1471) pending in the Minnesota legislature. HF0914 would eliminate payday loans entirely. HF1471 would impose some regulations on payday lenders and adds a private right of action for consumers, with attorney fees and costs.
Minnesota Public Radio has more on why payday lending is under scrutiny and at risk of [...]

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Enacted Payday Lending Legislation – 2008 Session

September 18, 2008

Enacted Payday Lending Legislation – 2008 Session | Nat’l Conference of State Legislatures (via Payday Lending Association)

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Predatory Lending Association: dedicated to extracting maximum profit from the working poor

September 18, 2008

The website of the Predatory Lending Association* is chock-full of great information for payday lenders, such as racial profiling tools, tips on lending to members of the military (no, 20 payday loan stores by a military base are not too many), and a working poor finder, which uses Google Maps to help predatory lenders find [...]

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Payday lending: what would would Jesus charge?

February 22, 2008

Apparently the money changers are back in the temple.
In a paper to be published this spring in the Catholic University Law Review, professors Christopher Peterson and Steven Graves find a surprising correlation between the geographic density of payday lenders and the political clout of conservative Christians. The more conservative Christians a state has the more [...]

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Preying on the elderly, payday lenders’ newest victims

February 12, 2008

How much worse can things get?
According to a new article in the WSJ, those wonderful community financial services people, more commonly know as Payday lenders are increasingly targeting recipients of Social Security and other government benefits, including disability and veteran’s benefits.

But it isn’t just the Payday lenders who are involved in this abuse of our [...]

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Alternatives to payday loans: small dollar loans

February 7, 2008

In what is hopefully the start of something, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) announced the selection of 30 banks to participate in a two-year pilot project to help identify best practices in affordable small-dollar loan programs that can be replicated by financial institutions.
“Our goal is to identify small-dollar loan programs that are profitable for [...]

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Payday loans: countering the spin

February 5, 2008

Elizabeth Warren at Credit Slips (a great blog I just now learned of on credit and bankruptcy by six academics) has a great post touching on some of the payday loan research including the the Center for Responsible Lending (PDF link), the Center for Community Capital (PDF link) and the the bad numbers in the [...]

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Payday loans only delay trouble

February 5, 2008

In all the back and forth on payday loans in the press and blogosphere, a study titled NC Consumers after Payday Lending by the Center for Community Capital at Univ. of North Carolina does seem to be getting as much play as it should. Though the Community Financial Services Association of America (CFSA), the trade [...]

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36% interest rate cap

January 26, 2008

Over at Consumer Rights Watch, Mark Ireland has stated two truths about Payday lending:
1. Payday lending is a business that simply keeps people in debt, rather than provide them with an emergency safety net, and
2. Only enforcement of a comprehensive interest rate cap at or around 36 percent for small loans will solve the debt [...]

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Helping the unbanked

January 24, 2008

Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are heading up a great initiative to get people to open bank accounts rather than use check cashing centers etc. that charge what is often a hefty a fee to cash their paycheck. In a commentary in the WSJ, they point out that: the number of check cashers, payday lenders [...]

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Refund anticipation loans are a bad deal

January 19, 2008

The smell of tax returns is in the air, and so is the stink of shysters. Tax season means tax preparers and others are pushing high-cost refund anticipation loans. H&R Block, the popular low-cost tax preparation service, pushes refund anticipation loans on its “Fast Money Options” page.
Nothing is free, and nobody will pass up an [...]

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Payday loan to pay your mortgage?

December 18, 2007

The headline says it all “ A low, low interest rate of 396 percent” According to this article at CNN a large number of people in foreclosure counseling in Ohio, land of many a payday lender) also have payday loans. If that isn’t a recipe for disaster, what is?
Of note also is that a Republican [...]

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Payday holiday: do we need a vacation from payday lending?

December 17, 2007

In a new staff study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Donald Morgan and Michael Strain take another look at whether payday loans are predatory or, in Morgan’s terms, welfare enhancing. This time around, Morgan takes a look at the “afermath” when Georgia and North Carolina banned payday lending.
(Dr. Morgan has commented on [...]

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Profits of a payday lender

November 29, 2007

I was cruising the web and found this site on payday lending. It has all kinds of stuff about how to run a store. One of the links in the “learning center” is on the profitability of payday and check advance lending. Based on their projections Payday lending is a hell of a business.
If you [...]

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