This article about the CFPA spreads misinformation:
The idea is to have just one agency that regulates everything financial – from credit cards to mortgages, even pawn shops and payday loan places. There are dozens of agencies now that regulate these different companies, but many argue they have been asleep at the wheel. Some say if we had this agency years ago, we might not be in the mess we’re in today.
Payday lending is regulated by the states, not the federal government, and should stay that way.
Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court should invalidate state usury laws which violate the Ninth Amendment right of citizens to freedoms not specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution. Interest rate caps essentially ban small-dollar short-term lending to people without good credit, an extremely important service and economic enterprise, and they also violate the separation of Church and State as they are founded in religious ideas. In a free society the price of loans should be determined by competition in the marketplace, not the dictates of those who want to force their beliefs on others.