unemployment
Do you need cash right now, but are worried that you might lose your job in the next two weeks? Guarantees for customers who lose their jobs have worked for
Hyundai, Ford, GM, and Sears, so now the practice has expanded to the payday loan industry.
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payday loans
A House subcommittee wants to legalize
payday loans with interest rates of up to 391%. Lobbyists from the payday industry bought Congress' support by showering influential members, including Chairman Luiz Gutierrez, with campaign cash. The Congressman is now playing good cop, bad cop with the payday industry, which is pretending to oppose his generous gift of a bill.
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payday loans
Ohio payday lenders, still smarting from their
punch in the face, are turning to lies and deceit to qualify a ballot initiative that would overturn the state's recently approved usury limits. The industry's petition gatherers are telling people that the initiative would "lower interest rates," even though it would raise the maximum allowable APR from 28% to an astounding 391%. They're also giving dollars to illiterate homeless people who sign the petition.
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credit unions
Consumers in Washington D.C. have apparently flocked to credit unions since the district outlawed payday lending last year. Payday lenders whined that lending without 300% APRs was utterly unaffordable, but credit unions are proving that it's possible to make long-term, low-dollar loans with interest rates as low as 16%.
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smackdowns
Gov. Ted Strickland, of the great state of Ohio, has signed a bill that punches the rapidly growing
payday lending industry in the face. As we've mentioned before, the bill will cap interest rates at 28% and limits consumers to 4 payday loans per year. A typical payday loan charges around $15 per $100 borrowed on a 2 week loan, which works out to an interest rate of 391%.
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loans
The
Columbus Dispatch says that Ohio lawmakers are getting inexplicably tough on payday lenders. Have people finally had enough?
Stunning both the payday-lending industry and consumer advocates, House Financial Institutions Chairman Rep. Christopher R. Widener, R-Springfield, made major changes yesterday to a plan he introduced last week that did not lower the current 391 percent rate.
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payday lending
The FDIC has announced a program designed to study and encourage small dollar
lending programs designed to compete with payday lenders. Under the program banks would offer "loan amounts of up to $1,000, mandatory savings components, payment periods that extend beyond a single pay cycle, interest rates below 36 percent, low or no origination fees, no prepayment penalties, prompt loan application processing, and access to financial education to help with asset building."
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Consumerist
