Nope.  That’s just not the case. 

According to a payday lender in Rockford, IL, his “store has been inundated with calls about short term loan opportunties to help pay bills, but most of them are denied right off the bat due to lack of a job or bank account.”

The Springfield City Council rejected a zoning ordinance that would have delineated the distance between payday lenders. 

While establishing a 1,500-foot separation between payday lenders, the proposal would have grandfathered existing businesses. Aldermen who opposed the measure said they didn’t want to discourage business, especially in a slow economy, nor did they want to establish a precedent.

“If someone comes next week and says, ‘I want the same thing for fast-food restaurants, how do we say ‘no?’” argued Ward 10 Ald. Tim Griffin.

The Payday Pundit is extremely happy that free market practices prevailed!

Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and the National Consumer Law Center have given two more states failing grades for offering choices to consumers.  Illinois and Missouri received straight F’s for having a multitude of short term credit options available to consumers.

This weekend story from the Chicago Tribune on Internet lending drew a sharp rebuke from NewsBusters, a media watchdog group.  NewBusters story begins:

The risks and benefits of so-called payday lending are certainly worthwhile of media coverage, and genuine instances of fraud or exploitation are and should be fodder for criticism in the print media. But it helps when your highlighted victim actually has good credit to start with and/or isn’t consistently turning to Internet loans to supplement income.

The rest of NewsBusters piece is here.

A lending company called AmeriCash is criticized by consumer groups in this Chicago Tribune article for steering costumers into longer-term consumer loans instead of payday loans.    

The Payday Pundit knows nothing about AmeriCash, but I think this article proves that there’s no winning with consumer groups.   

The Heartland Institute, a national nonprofit research and education organization based in Chicago, offers their perspective on payday loans.

“While payday loans are controversial, they serve an important purpose in the market: to provide short-term emergency loans when other sources of financing are unavailable. These loans clearly are more desirable than bounced checks and late fees, which only further damage a blemished credit history.”

 Heartland also provides links to articles and research examining payday lending from a free-market perspective.