predatory lending

CompuCredit, an Atlanta subprime lender that specializes in high-rate credit cards, payday loans, auto financing and debt collection, is part of the country’s leading coalition on financial literacy.

As TWI has reported, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with talk show host and commentator Tavis Smiley for “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods beginning in 2005. A suit by the Illinois attorney general contends Wells used the seminars to market high-cost and risky subprime loans to minority borrowers.
Smiley declined any comment for our [...]

Prominent author, commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley has announced that he’s cutting all business ties to Wells Fargo & Co. The move comes in the wake of a TWI story last week about Wells Fargo “Wealth Building” seminars held in black neighborhoods starting in 2005, headlined by Smiley, which a recent lawsuit [...]

The PBS star attracted crowds to what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth, but a lawsuit alleges it was actually just the opposite.

Consumer advocates for years have warned that the payday loan industry preys on low-income borrowers who become reliant on one loan to pay off another — with enormous interest rates applied all the while. But a report released yesterday offers what is perhaps the most clear evidence to date that payday lending mires borrowers in [...]

Are we really going to go through this again? Immediately after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development finished putting the final touches on a controversial plan to allow first-time homebuyers to use an $8,000 tax credit as a downpayment on a new home, some in the  Senate are proposing nearly doubling the credit [...]

If you ever got picked on as a kid, and handled it by clinging to the belief that life was fair and your nemesis would get a comeuppance, then this is for you:
Fremont General Corp. once one of the nation’s top 10 subprime lenders, has agreed to pay $10 million to resolve charges it preyed [...]

What has — or hasn’t — Congress learned in the aftermath of the burst of the housing bubble?

New HUD program allows first-time homebuyers to borrow against an $8,000 tax credit for downpayments, raising questions about what was learned from the housing crisis.

Chairman of a House Financial Services subcommittee is pushing a loophole-riddled bill that would allow payday lenders, who are his top campaign contributors, to charge annual interest rates of nearly 400 percent.