At least that’s the narrative taking hold in Left-of-Center publications.  From Salon:

Alert the Elizabeth Warren media! We’ve known for at least a month that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the lame-duck chairman of the Senate Banking and Finance Committee, isn’t the biggest fan of the Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert whom progressives are championing for the job of director of the newly created Bureau for Consumer Financial Protection.

They had to get there sometime.  It’s be interesting to watch this:

Sadly, while bank charges remain punitive and non-profit alternatives small scale, there are few viable alternatives to payday lenders. I wonder how many billions more will be lent before the end of the football season?

Essentially, the media is trying to browbeat banks into offering less expensive alternatives.  Banks, not wanting to lose money, are reluctant.

From the story:

As Wyoming weathers the economic downturn, one business sector is seeing significant growth: payday lending. Marc Homer, director of Wyoming Kids Count, says the amount loaned has risen 10 years in a row, and is up 15 percent in a year.

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Payday lenders say they offer a needed financial product to high-risk borrowers shunned by banks. Homer says families in a financial pinch need better options. He wants Wyoming to join a number of states that are regulating the industry by capping interest and fees, and limiting the number of loans per year, as well as helping establish partnerships with credit unions to offer short-term small loans.

Interesting story out of New York: 

State legislators in Albany are considering a bill that will allow check-cashing stores to make small loans, providing a new route to quick, short-term credit for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Opponents of the measure fear that low- and middle-income earners will be trading temporary relief for longer lasting financial hardship.

The bill, known as the Short-Term Financial Services Loan Act, would authorize registered check-cashing stores to make loans between $300 and $2,000 for 90 to 180 days. Loans can’t be more than 25 percent of a borrower’s gross monthly income; installment repayments must be 10 percent or less.

“I don’t know whether the banks were at all interested in getting at these small amounts,” said Assemblywoman Joan Millman (D-Brownstone Brooklyn). She indicated that the bill could come up for a vote when the legislature reconvenes shortly after Labor Day. Millman became a co-sponsor because there are many “people who could benefit, people living from paycheck to paycheck.”

It is one thing to just criticize but another thing to criticize and offer an alternative.

Payday loans are expensive to borrowers because they are also expensive for the lender. Politicians, both left and right, have done a poor job making sure the banks do what they were intended to do, and that is to give loans to people who need it so that’s why there is a reason for us (the payday lenders) to exists.

From the story:

From the story: 

Obama tied the credit card regulations to those in the financial regulatory reform legislation he signed into law last month, specifically calling out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Taken together, Obama said, the regulations in the two bills “will empower a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with just one job: looking out for consumers in our financial system.”

“This includes making sure that credit card reforms are implemented forcefully and that big banks and lenders are living up to their responsibilities under the law,” Obama said in the statement. “And in the wake of a terrible recession, these reforms and this independent consumer watchdog will not only protect consumers, they’ll strengthen our economy as a whole, leveling the playing field for responsible lenders and ensuring that families and small business owners are better able to make financial decisions that work for them.”

Warren endorsed by her students.

Wall Street Journal is unhappy:

How much more consumer protection can credit-card customers stand? If President Obama selects activist law professor Elizabeth Warren to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, we will soon have an answer. Meantime, thanks to a recent flurry of federal rule-making and legislating, consumers are already learning that “consumer protection” means higher interest rates and fewer card options.

It was among our safest predictions that reduced credit to consumers would result when the Federal Reserve announced new credit-card rules in 2008, and then Congress followed up with the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009. By limiting the ability of banks to increase rates on delinquent borrowers and to charge fees on unprofitable customers, Washington encouraged card issuers to be more selective in advancing credit and to demand higher rates when they do.

From the story: 

Restrictions proposed by a Plan and Zoning Commission subcommittee include the prohibition of pawn and payday loan operations in neighborhood retail and neighborhood pedestrian commercial districts. The businesses would still be allowed in eight other business and industrial districts.

A quarter-mile separation between the businesses and a 150-foot buffer from residential districts could also apply.
“I want the strongest, legally sound ordinance” possible, City Councilman Brian Meyer said.

In mid-May, the City Council enacted a 180-day moratorium on new pawnshops and payday lenders amid growing concerns about their proliferation and impact on neighborhoods.