Today's New York Times has an article on payday lending, "Seductively Easy, Payday Loans Often Snowball." The piece focuses on Gallup, New Mexico, a town with a population of 22,000 that has over 40 storefront payday lending outfits, many of whose clientelle are Navajo or Hispanic. Although the Times presents the industry's spin and uses the term 'predatory lending' in scare quotes, the overall picture is one of an industry run amok at the expense of the most vulnerable consumers.
Payday lending is a hot topic around the country right now. Here are some other interesting articles from past few days: An piece in the Virginian-Times Pilot discusses North Carolina's successful efforts to combat payday lending, including providing low-cost alternatives: Will Virginia adopt North Carolina's example? In Arkansas, this article reports, legislators have introduced a bill to curb payday lending because the state supreme court hasn't enforced the state constitution's usury cap. And in Oregon, the industry has found ways to get around recent anti-payday-lending laws. (For more information, see this page at Center for Responsible Lending's website.)
Payday loans definitely place people into a cycle of debt. The payday lobby's own researchers have acknowledged that the average payday loan borrower takes out 11-12 loans per year and stays encapsulated in debt for 18-24 months. This is predatory lending through and through and we need to end the debt trap for millions of borrowers nationwide. Help us beat the industry in Ohio. As they say, so goes Ohio, so goes the nation!
Visit http://www.yesonissue5.org to join our campaign and to donate to our efforts!
Posted by: Greg | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 02:41 PM
Payday loans definitely place people into a cycle of debt. The payday lobby's own researchers have acknowledged that the average payday loan borrower takes out 11-12 loans per year and stays encapsulated in debt for 18-24 months. This is predatory lending through and through and we need to end the debt trap for millions of borrowers nationwide. Help us beat the industry in Ohio. As they say, so goes Ohio, so goes the nation!
Visit http://www.yesonissue5.org to join our campaign and to donate to our efforts!
Posted by: Greg | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 02:40 PM
If you use the RSS generator on the NYT web site (use the "share" link in the little box on the right side of the article), you can get a link that does not expire in a week. I found the one for this story on another blog - it's http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/us/23payday.html?ei=5090&en=f49f883ba7e2e8ec&ex=1324530000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Posted by: Elizabeth Nugent | Wednesday, January 03, 2007 at 01:56 PM