In his latest rant against the payday lending industry in Ohio, Thomas Suddes argues payday lenders are operating through a loophole. The fact is, while dozens of lenders closed their doors upon passage of the annual rate cap in Ohio, other lenders, instead of laying off employees and turning customers away, began offering different credit products and services- all well within the Ohio lending laws.

In fact, during the legislative debate concerning payday lending, lenders were urged to apply for licenses to operate under Ohio’s Small Loan or Mortgage Loan Act and encouraged to come up with new credit products to service the growing consumer demand for short-term, small-dollar loans. This is exactly what lenders are doing- operating under the Small Loan or the Mortgage Loan Act, both which have been part of Ohio law for thirty years.

Thomas Suddes is a coward, not to mention an ignoramus and ideologue. We engaged in a brief email exchange — which you can find on this blog — and I completely dismantled his fallacious arguments one after the other.

Did he respond? Of course not. That’s what cowardly ideologues do.

The odius Thomas Suddes, Ohio’s Michael Moore, has weighed in on Issue 5 in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Thanks to Lawrence Meyers for sharing this back and forth between himself and Thomas Suddes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

As is typically the case, editorial writers and columnists like Mr. Suddes have never used a payday loan, never been in a store, never spoken with a customer or an employee…yet still seem to know everything about the service, who uses it, and why.