This article says Wall Street is quietly working to undo financial reform:

From the story:

Several local short-term loan businesses in the Flathead are shutting their doors after voters passed an initiative capping the interest rates they can charge their customers.

Shelley Gould of Red D Cash in Evergreen said she will be closing after 10 years now that I-164 is in place, putting herself and another employee out of work.

“This is really, really a travesty,” Gould said. “(It’s) knocking on the door of free enterprise – shut down free enterprise if we don’t like what they’re doing.”

Well said.

This reporter doesn’t know that payday loans customers have bank accounts.

Elizabeth Warren picked a credit card regulator:

Elizabeth Warren, the special White House adviser assigned to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has selected David Silberman of the Kessler Group to run the unit that will research and write rules for credit cards, according to two people involved in the decision.

Warren has said that among her top priorities is regulating credit-card disclosures, which would affect issuers including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.

Silberman manages the insurance business at the Boston-based consulting firm, according to the company’s website. Its clients include the Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co., the Union Labor Life Insurance Co., and the AFL-CIO. He may be named to the post as early as today, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision isn’t public.

In her latest interview, Elizabeth Warren hits the same old themes: 

Protection from Predatory Lenders
“What we’re going to push for is to cut down the paperwork at closing on the mortgage and instead try to get a one page mortgage shopping sheet that carries the basic information that you need in order to decide whether or not you can afford the mortgage and that gives you the opportunity to compare one mortgage with two or three others.”

What’s the point of this argument?

From May to September, 83 percent of the payday loan industry’s revenue in Kentucky was generated by borrowers who took out five or more loans, according to an analysis by Melissa Fry Konty, a sociologist and researcher for the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea.

After taking out a payday loan, if consumers still face a cash shortfall, they have all other other options available.  They can bounce  a check, use overdraft protection, borrow from family, etc.  The fact that they choose another payday advance demonstrates that it’s a more affordable services than the other choices.

The scammers have got to be stopped: 

The local Better Business Bureau office has issued a warning about scam artists making the rounds in central Ohio, posing as collectors of nonexistent payday loans.

A Logan resident reported a call threatening legal action and imprisonment in attempting to collect a $300 debt that the person did not owe, the BBB said.

“Phony debt collectors use a variety of scare tactics in an attempt to commit theft,” said Joan Coughlin, BBB spokeswoman.

Under the Reason TV video “In Defense of Payday Lending”  posted at Wizbangblog:   

All I have to say is that nobody is forcing people to use credit cards or pay day loan services. If somebody is using one or the other, they need to be responsible for knowing, up front, what the risks and costs are of doing so.

On the flip side, the provider of those services must be held accountable for ensuring that any rates, costs, fess must be readily and easily available, provided, and understood.

Now that’s common sense.

This company offers a 100-day short-term loan.  In our competitive economy, consumers needing short-term credit can access a 14-day payday advance, a 100-day loan such as this one, an installment loan, a title loan, a credit advance and probably a half dozen more products I can’t think of right  now.  As long as the terms and fees are simple to understand, what’s the problem?

From the story:

Nearly half (47%) of bankers believe the reform is not at all effective and an additional 52% feel it is somewhat effective. Only two percent say the reform is effective and no one says that it is “very effective.”

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“Many of the rules under the Dodd-Frank Act have yet to be defined by regulators, which may account for the uncertainty and trepidation bankers feel about this legislation,” says Nichole Jordan, partner and sector leader of Grant Thornton’s Banking and Securities practice