…Or perhaps you are interested in a homemade bear costume complete with “musty scent.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an interesting look at the pawnbroking business. 

People sometimes confuse pawnbroking and other short-term financial services with payday loans.  While they offer another option for people facing and unexpected and unbudgeted expense – pawnbroking and payday loans are very different services.  Here are some FAQs about payday advances.

Dylan McCament at the Mount Vernon News in Ohio has done something very few reporters even try; he wrote a straightforward article on payday lending giving equal weight to industry and critics and with no loaded negative tone.   

The Payday Pundit applauds Mr. McCament for practicing journalism the way it’s supposed to be practiced.  Unfortunately, this approach will preclude Mr. McCament for getting a job at a larger paper such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer.    

This Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial on payday lending is off the rails.   The Payday Pundit doesn’t know where to begin, but let’s try: 

The Plain Dealer says some legislators “display a lack of interest in what’s best for their consituents.”  It’s so condescending the Pundit almost expected them to say something about ”people clinging to guns and religion.”   It’s alway obnoxious when highly paid editorial writers living in an elitist bubble think they can speak for working people while their advertising department brags about what an affluent readership it has.

The editorial writers also note that a leading payday lending/pawnshop company had lots of “revenue” last year.   Revenue is not profit.  Profit is “revenue” minus costs.   Accusing a company of having high revenue is a brain dead cheap shot.  As is accusing legislators who receive a few thousand dollars in contributions of listening more to lobbyists than constitutents.

Finally, the editorials writers says that a legislator “is free to believe an APR higher than 36 percent might address that. Most other Ohioans don’t.”  How do they know “most Ohioans don’t?”  Have they polled “most Ohioans?”  They mean that the elitists at the editorial board don’t because they know better than “most Ohioans.”

As reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Round the Rotunda,

Real people – not the paid-to-be-here, fiddling-with-their-Blackberrys-crowd – flocked to the Statehouse Thursday for a committee hearing on a payday lending bill that would cap interest rates for the short-term, high-interest loans at 36 percent.

And we do mean flocked: The large hearing room didn’t have an empty seat, the hallway was lined and a dreary overflow room where you could only listen to a speaker even drew takers.

Listen to media coverage of hearing

The supporters of the payday advance industry (employees and customers) outnumbered those who want to ban payday lending in Ohio.  Turns out those who work in the industry and those who use the service are the people who would be most impacted by a 36% rate cap. And the people who legislators should listen to most.