Payday Pundit

The Wall Street Journal investigates banks boosting their revenue by ratcheting up fees: 
Last week, Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank started charging some customers a new $10 “overdraft protection transfer fee” to transfer money from a savings account or line of credit to cover a checking-account shortfall. Citibank had already raised foreign-exchange transaction fees on its debit cards […]

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Even the Wall Street Journal is now writing about the Ohio and Arizizona ballot initiatives: 
Now payday lenders are fighting back with the ballot measures. They are pouring $30 million into initiatives that will be on the Nov. 4 ballot in Arizona and Ohio, where payday-lending branches outnumber Starbucks and McDonald’s outlets combined. The two states […]

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Pre-paid debt cards.  Now that a great way to keep kids on a budget.  From the Wall Street Journal piece: 

This fall, financial-services companies are focusing more of their campus marketing on “prepaid debit cards,” which work like standard debit cards except that they aren’t linked to a traditional checking account. Among the issuers aggressively marketing […]

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Nothing, but lawmakers who are impotent to deal with the housing crisis feel the need to beat up on lenders, any lenders.   Today’s Wall Street Journal sums up the political climate:

“State legislators are really frustrated that they can’t do anything about the subprime-mortgage stuff,” said Steven Schlein, a spokesman for the Community Financial Services Association […]

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I don’t know what it is with the Wall Street Journal, but they seem to have it in for the payday lending industry.   An article today about Rent-A-Center says the company asked a charity it supports not to endorse an effort to ban payday loans.  Rent-A-Center put out this reply.  
The Wall Street Journal wrongly reported this morning that Rent-A-Center […]

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Interesting discussion on a the Volokh Conspiracy blog prompted by a column, “In Defense of Usury” in the Wall Street Journal by Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman. 

Several of the commenters raised the challenge that nothwithstanding the authors’ conclusions, very high interest rates are still “immoral” and should be banned. But I don’t really follow the logic of the […]

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the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”  
In today’s Wall Street Journal, a story begins: 
      “Concerned that “payday lenders” and other high-interest storefront operations are improperly capturing Social Security direct-deposit payments from the elderly and disabled, the Social Security Administration said it would likely change how it delivers some benefits.” 
Wait a second.  The […]

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The Wall Street Journal offers advice for young adults needing a short-term loan:  get a loan from the bank of Mom and Dad.   No Plan B is suggested if Mom and Dad don’t have the cash.   

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George McGovern’s column in the WSJ advocating for freedom of choice on everything from healthcare to payday loans has prompted a lively debate in the blogosphere.  
Check out  http://tailrank.com/5344099/Freedom-Means-Responsibility for all of the latest discussions from all sides of the aisle.  
“Since leaving office I’ve written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I’ve […]

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Another interesting comment made by Yunus in the Journal article was his belief that charity is not the best alternative to microloans. Yunus believes that charity cannot ever match a profit making industry for efficiency and service.
Around the country, as lawmakers and payday lending critics call for a ban on payday lending, maybe they should rethink their attitude that charity […]

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