Is there going to be a fight in Mississippi?
January 7, 2010 | Mississippi, industry, regulation | Comments (0)From the Mississippi Business Journal:
Arizona will join a handful of Western states this year in proposing legislation that enacts a new set of regulations on the title loan and payday loan industry, if not eliminate it all together.
In Mississippi, lawmakers will make the most noise over the process of crafting a budget while state revenues continue to plunge, but one member of the House Banking and Finance Committee, where a regulation bill would most likely originate, said that there could be some appetite to address the issue.
“I’ve actually looked into this,” said Rep. David Norquist, D-Cleveland, whose district and other parts of the Delta are heavily dotted with payday and title lenders.
Norquist said his major concern is the perpetual cycle of debt people who use the lenders find themselves in, paying nothing but interest and never knocking down the principle.
Ideally, that’s what any new regulations would seek to eliminate or reduce, Norquist said.
“The best way to do that is to limit the amount of the loan,” Norquist said. “If you look at credit card companies, they’re charging 20 percent, 30 percent. The difference is, they’re allowing you to put $15,000 or $20,000 on these cards. That’s where people can’t get out of the hole. If you limit your exposure, you also limit somebody’s inability to pay.”
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