“Banks don’t want to deal with small amounts or short term loans, that’s one of the biggest issues where we really feel there is a market need.”

Knowing that payday lenders can’t operate under a 36% rate cap, Howen added:

“Bankruptcies go up when we’re not in there and quality of life definitely decreases for many of our customers.”

She’s right to think that supporters of the initiative are people who don’t use the service and “just see the interest rates.”

View full article in KFBB.com

“A lot of us are terrified about what happens in rule-making,” said Stephen Lerner of the Service Employees International Union, which is pressing the administration to nominate Ms. Warren. “Symbolically, it does seem incredibly important to pick somebody who not only invented the idea, but someone who doesn’t claim to be a neutral.”

Bankers oppose her nomination for exactly that reason. Roger M. Beverage, head of the Oklahoma Bankers Association, said that Ms. Warren was widely respected in Oklahoma, where she was raised and is still remembered as a high school debate champion. But he said that his members did not believe she would understand the needs and concerns of community banks.

Just as important, bank shareholders will demand that banks start competing with their newly hobbled fringe counterparts for those 20 million households.

Banks that are scared to death of customers without perfect credit scores are going to look to our customers for new revenues?  Well, let them try.  We welcome competition.

The bill adds regulations and rules about many activities that had little or nothing to do with the crisis.

Who knew?

A dozen localities have adopted resolutions calling for the state to block what the resolution calls “predatory, usurious lending practices” by imposing an interest rate cap of 36 percent, calculated as an effective annual percentage rate, that includes fees and charges that payday lenders require. On May 27, Staunton City Council first adopted the resolution and then sent letters to other towns, counties and cities in the state asking them to consider doing the same.

Virginia used to be a very free-market, libertarian state.

Payday loan customers in Pinal County already are feeling the impact of the expiration on Thursday of a law allowing the lending practice beginning Thursday.

Under the change, lenders no longer will be allowed to set interest rates as high as 460 percent annually. A 10-year-old law allowing them to go above the 36 percent rate cap for other lenders expires today.

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The Community Financial Services Association of America, an industry trade group, says that although payday loans are expensive, when people are in need of short-term cash they are often glad to have the option available to them.

Many of those who use payday loans have limited alternative sources of credit such as pawn shops, bank overdraft protection, credit card cash advances and informal lenders, according to CFSA,

Efforts to eliminate payday lenders from communities do not address the need some consumers have for short-term credit, and lack of access to the loans could place customers at greater risk for bounced checks, disconnected utilities or lack of funds for emergencies such as medical expenses or car repairs, the organization said.

It’s cocktail hour on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and dozens of rich New Yorkers are gathered around a grand piano, sipping white wine in the living room of an elegant high-rise apartment. There is plenty of gossip to be heard, but this is not a social event. The city’s moneyed elite have come to commiserate about their growing distaste for their longtime congresswoman, Carolyn B. Maloney — and to open their wallets for the unlikely 34-year-old challenger they hope will defeat her.

They did not always feel this way about Maloney. The 64-year-old Democratic representative hasn’t faced a serious challenge to her seat since she was first elected in 1992. For nearly two decades, they have viewed her as a solid, if unremarkable, member of Congress. But to the dismay of her ultra-rich constituents — among them more than a few Wall Street billionaires — Maloney has become one of the Capitol’s leading advocates for tough new restrictions on the banking and credit card industries. The way the people at the cocktail party see it, Maloney betrayed them. And they want her fired.

The House overrode vetoes Tuesday on a couple of high-profile  bills, including one that lawmakers hope will close a loophole in payday lending legislation approved last year.

The payday lending bill, H.3790, stipulates that a payday loan cannot be one for a period that is shorter than 120 days, unsecured, or requires presentment of a post-dated check.

After passing new regulations for the payday lending industry for the first time since it came into the state in 1998, lawmakers found that more than 100 previous payday lenders had switched business licenses to become short-term lenders, skirting the new regulations.

The new regulations stipulate borrowers can only have one loan a time, for up to $550, and was to create an electronic data base to track the loans.