National People’s Action and the Public Accountability Initiative are up with a report on financial links between payday lenders, Main Street banks and Wall Street banks. “While small businesses and individuals have struggled to get affordable loans in the wake of the taxpayer bailouts, payday lenders have received new More…
By all accounts, Sen. Kay Hagan’s (D-N.C.) amendment to Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill was an excellent one. The first-term senator had a long-standing reputation in her home state for fighting payday lending, the $42 billion a year industry that offers easy-to-get short-term loans in exchange for More…
Last week, the Senate passed a sweeping overhaul of the regulation of banks and financial institutions. The bill, authored by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), does not just focus on Wall Street firms, changing leverage limits and capital requirements. It focuses on Main Street banks and lenders as well. The bill More…
For many people, payday lenders and check-cashing outfits are the scum of the financial-sector earth; they’re called usurious, compared to illegal loan sharks and may finally be subject to at least some federal regulation (if not enforcement). But G.D. at Post Bourgie has an More…
When states from New Mexico to Illinois passed payday reform laws over the past few years, it seemed as if the movement to curb short-term loans with interest rates that sometimes reached 400 percent or more was gaining steam. In Ohio and Arizona, voters even took to the polls More…
As a credit squeeze continues, calls to beef up financial literacy among America’s consumers are taking on a new urgency.
In Massachusetts, Democratic Senate candidate Stephen Pagliuca is pushing for a national financial literacy campaign, saying it would help avoid a repeat of the financial system collapse More…
Following up on our piece this month about how payday lenders have found a friend in Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) — who’s pushing legislation that caps interest rates on those loans at nearly 400 percent — it comes as little surprise that the pawnshop industry, among the largest sub-sets More…
Mike’s excellent story today about the weak reforms of the payday lending industry proposed by onetime industry foe Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) details a disappointing setback for efforts to curb the insidious practice of charging down-on-their-luck consumers loan shark rates for short-term loans.
As congressional Democrats work to solidify finance industry reforms, a growing push to rein in payday lenders is running smack into a formidable barrier: the rising influence of the lenders themselves.
Not only has the industry stepped up its lobbying and political contributions in recent years, More…
As the presidential campaign turns nastier by the minute, soaking up most of the public’s attention, it’s easy to overlook the other battle out there: the waning days of a long fight by payday lenders to bring respect to an industry that charges people in desperate circumstances 400 percent interest More…
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