Even if our critics don’t.   From the Atlanta Journal Constitution: 

Another bill — Senate Bill 130 — would quietly allow resumption of payday lending, a predatory practice banned five years ago. In its “lease-back” incarnation, payday lenders could make loans with triple-digit interest rates that were secured not by future paychecks but by refrigerators and stoves. (When the world ends, the only survivors will be cockroaches and payday lenders. They have demonstrated incredible adaptability and agility to reinvent themselves and coax legislators to carry their banner. The lenders, that is, not the cockroaches.)

Yea, but it’s newspapers, not payday lenders, that are on the endangered species list.   It would be funny if some of these editorial writers that lose their jobs in the coming years need to take out a payday loan.  Or better yet, take a job at a payday loan store.

Durbin doesn’t know what he is doing..After he shuts down the pawn shops, what are all of these people who need short term loans going to do?

Senate Bill 500, introduced by Senator Dick Durbin, would eliminate virtually all forms of short-term credit (with the exception of bouncing a check, consumers would still be able to do that).  This new website, http://www.SaveMyPawnshop.com, is dedicated to making sure the millions of pawn customers across the country are aware of this legislation.

Today’s editorial in the Lexington-Herald Leader is all over the place.  They are upset that progress on passing additional regulations on payday lenders has been slow, they advocate for rate caps (which they admit will shut lenders down), yet they urge the governor to veto the reforms that have been passed.

But this Walletpop story, tells us that credit limits being slashed is pretty scary, too.

No, not the Payday Pundit, PDLindustryblog. He’s not happy with the state of Illinois.

These Texas politicians who we discussed a couple of days ago are conflating payday loans with the subprime lending problems.  Payday loans are on average $300-$325.  The average mortgage payment is $1700.

This is an unsual story.  The Santa Monica, CA City Council passed an ordinance to help relocate the city’s last remaining pawn shop.  It had lost its space due to redevelopment.   The Payday Pundit once lived in Santa Monica so this comes as a pleasant surprise given my knowledge of the City Council’s anti-business leanings.   

From the Associated Press story: 

Congressmen, grass roots activists, one of the world’s richest men and even the Roman Catholic Church are now rebelling against the rates, some of the world’s highest and equal to 10 times the top rate banks pay out on deposits.

“Banks are acting with irresponsible voracity, demanding extremely high interest rates which in the end, people won’t be able to pay,” the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said in December. Banks’ “insatiable greed” is speeding an economic crisis that may spark social unrest, the Church warned.

So great is the anger that Mexico’s conservative governing party has argued in favor of following in the footsteps of leftist Venezuela, which caps credit card interest rates at 33 percent.

The Payday Pundit is against rate caps, but we don’t understand why competition isn’t keeping credit card rates lower in Mexico.   The story alludes to the fact that many customers are high credit risks.  

We’re talking about an attempt by the Sacramento City Council to restrict payday lending stories.