Payday Pundit

In case you didn’t know…
The Center for Responsible Lending’s Self-Helf Credit Union charges $25 per bounced check.  This is for both checks and electronic withdrawls.
So, a money saving tip for CRL- if you are about to bounce a check for $100 or less, you could save yourself $10 by visiting your local payday lender and […]

[Read more →]

Ryan Cooper, a freelance writer, is convinced more than ever that the free market offers consumers the most choices: 
The decision haunted me as I read the online bank statement. A combination of holiday spending, personal property taxes and a recent job loss caused me to overdraw my checking account.
If I didn’t come up with $200 […]

[Read more →]

Washington Post columnist Nancy Trejos is skeptical.   From her column today which discusses the recent Federal Reserve proposal to crack down on “deceptive” practices:
“The OTS {Office of Thrift Supervision} and Fed proposal show that these agencies recognize that abusive overdraft loans are a significant problem,” said Eric Halperin, DC director of the Center for Responsible […]

[Read more →]

What’s All This Fussing About? has an interesting (if lengthy) diatribe against increasingly pervasive and arbitrary fees from banks and credit cards.  A taste:
Examing banks further; the fees we’re paying for accounts have nearly tripled in the past decade. Beyond the familiar maintenance fees and minimum balance fees, a NSF (nonsufficient funds) charge has reached $45, and […]

[Read more →]

So says John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute who weighs in on the payday lending fight in Ohio in a guest editorial in the Lima, Ohio newpaper. 
More from the piece:
        Evidence is already mounting from other states that caps on payday loans reduce choices for consumers and leave them financially worse off than before. And, ironically, […]

[Read more →]

…compared to bounced check fees and overdraft protection.  The payday lending industry has been making this point for years, but now economists are catching up.  This article on the blog of the Left-wing magazine Mother Jones discusses research by East Carolina University Professor Marc Anthony Fusaro.   
From the article:
     Fusaro looked at overdraft protection as a form of a short-term loan and found that people […]

[Read more →]

This story in USA Today details deals that universities make with banks to market debit and credit cards to students.  Andrew Cuomo, New York AG, is investigating these arrangements.   Most interesting is the chart at the very end of the story.  Because students write smaller than average checks (about $12) the per dollar cost of […]

[Read more →]

The National Center for Policy Analysis has a short article on the high costs of bounced check fees and the negative impact of payday loan bans.
Read “Bad Bounce”

[Read more →]