Letters to the Editor
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Oh... one more thing
There is another subset of people who are sometimes tempted to embrace the loony schemes I mentioned. Those who are poor or desperately ill, or otherwise without hope due to tragic life circumstances. We need laws and more for the benefit of those folks.
While I would gleefully watch some greedy fool get taken in by the false promises of material weatlth offered by "The Secret" etc., I would gladly advocate for the revocation of prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment for anyone low enough to offer false hope to the desperate.
Just to be clear...
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Heh, funny!
But which of the comments were really defending payday loans? Because I thought it was all part of the satire.
I got caught in the quicksand for a little while when I was in college. Thankfully, I haven't had to borrow from them since; but the ones inviting people to hock their cars (the one thing of value many people own) are really pissing me off.
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Profits
two things...
One, I was in Reno one weekend and on TV was an ad for a temporary loan. The annual interest rate that they put on the screen for a split second in small print was 99%. Wow.
Two, I have a sailboat in Mexico. More than one of the mega power yachts down there is owned by people that own these loan providers in the US. These guys are doing just fine...
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Let's be a little more careful
Herself wrote:
There is no excuse for those rip off rates. I can't believe anyone would be an apologist for those thieves. When you get down to it, most people are honest and it is very easy to blackball people who are not. Calculate the risk, add *reasonable* profit, and you are not looking at 36%.
I'm curious how you calculated the risk, can you give details? Also, what was your estimate of reasonable profit? I'm not being sarcastic and I believe you that you can't get to 36% - but let's not be sloppy, we're talking about an industry here. There's nothing unethical about providing poor people loans, even desperate poor people. There is something unethical (and illegal) about deceptive marketing, and I would rather see those laws enforced than set arbitrary usury rates.
An easy way to see if 36% is unreasonable or not is to pass the law and see if the lenders go out of business. If not, it's reasonable.
A better way to see if 36% is unreasonable is to create a bank specializing in loans to poor desperate people at lower rates than the loan sharks. (This is essentially what microlending does, no?) It should make money and actually help people who are looking for loans, instead of just telling them they shouldn't be borrowing.
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Borrowing Rates
ATM 5475 percent ie 20.00 @ 3.00 fee 15 percent a day 5475 percent APR
late fees same
WEll this is a service,
if you don't wanna pay the piper,
don't let him (Craig) blow your horn.
In my state they voted to shut these payday loans down....hold for drama...then miraculously the bill died...hmmmm?... spose the legislators realized they did not yet have their slice of this pie,
bet they have a slice now.
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What We Got Here Is...A FAILURE To Communicate...
...some people JUST CAN'T READ.
GEEEEZZ...
Show me where I said that those who bury themselves in debt are "wogs." Or any other form of "untermenscht", as if such a thing existed to begin with.
It's a matter of common sense.
Look, Peter Paul, the concept of a payday loan is VERY simple: Take account of how much they are charging for the loan, how much you need right now, and how much of your next paycheck will be left. This is not higher mathematics. If your loan plus interest payment will eat the entirety of your next paycheck then that will be putting yourself in a hole, so you DON'T DO IT.
Someone stupid enough to hock their car at meiser's rates to get cash right away because they cannot rub a couple of brain cells together and realize that however much they need the cash now, they'll need the car more later on, does NOT get my sympathy.
And I've lived on next to nothing, working shit jobs with no insurance and having to rely on public transportation. It stank, and I'm sure it still stinks. But even as a post-grad twentysomething with little raw life experience I knew better than to go and borrow money I didn't and wouldn't have. That doesn't make me "posh", it makes me a possessor of common sense, of which there seems to be precious little of in this sub-prime world of our's.