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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loans
Ohio's House of Representatives passed the ominous face-punching legislation that will, if passed by the Senate, become the strictest
payday lending regulation around.
After months of debate over bills that were backed by either the payday industry or consumer advocates, the proposal that passed the House 69-26 is a victory for the Ohio Coalition for Responsible Lending, which pushed to lower the current 391-percent annual interest rate on two-week payday loans.
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evil
This writer is quickly growing convinced that payday lenders are the modern version of indentured servitude, trapping consumers in cycles of debt that simply cannot be broken in their lifetimes. The Wall Street Journal published a story last week about payday lenders who make
loans to the elderly and
effectively take over their Social Security or disability payments, handing back whatever remains after they take their cut. Though it sounds like it should be illegal, payday loan companies are partnering with banks to pull this off.
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usury
New Hampshire will become the latest state to
keep payday lenders from gouging their patrons. A measure passed by the legislature will cap interest rates on payday loans at 36%, a drastic change for an industry used to bludgeoning underbanked consumers with interest rates exceeding 500%. Payday borrowers spend an average of $793 trying to repay a $325 loan. Let's see how the economic leeches spin this as a loss for consumers.
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weeping openly
The
Leftwing Conspiracy blog scanned a cute pamphlet that a payday lender is distributing to try to drum up sympathy now that there's a rate cap on loans given out to military personnel. Boohoo!
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predatory lending
One in four utilities bills is paid in person, and often the transaction takes place within a payday lending establishment, according to a new report by the National Consumer Law Center. The report finds that there are over 650 licensed payday lenders serving as bill paying facilities for 21 public utilities companies, including 206 working for AT&T alone.
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privacy
If you've used Check into Cash in Champaign, IL you might have a serious problem. The payday lender has been leaving customer's personal information including Social Security numbers, addresses, photocopies of driver's licenses and other personal information out on the street for anyone to find. Luckily, that someone was a newspaper. From the News-Gazette:
Wow. That's something," said Roberta Hazen, who with her husband, Roger, has taken out payday loans from Check into Cash. "Why did they just dump it? Nowadays you should shred everything before you throw it out. They should have been more cautious," she said.
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payday
CreditPro is a new blog written by a non-profit credit counselor, and he has some harsh words about Payday loans and why they are never a good idea:
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payday
There's almost as many PayDay Loan Centers in America as there are McDonald's.
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Consumerist
usury
payday
