From a local story in Nevada: 

For instance, if you use payday loan companies, they can automatically lower your credit rating. It’s important to know that once something is on your credit report, it becomes part of your credit history.

Customers use payday loans, in part, because they don’t affect your credit rating.  

TIME magazine reports that the credit crunch is moving from Wall Street to Main Street, so this pundit wants to know, how is it affecting you, loyal reader?  Do you live in a state that already limits payday lending or in Ohio, Arizona, Illinois or other city that is considering new regulations?  Do you use payday loans or do you just like having the option if you needed it? 

Maggie Thurber does a great job speaking against Issue 5 in Ohio:

Since when is it the role of the government to track what you borrow, when and how much? Since when is it the role of government to tell you how you can use the money you borrow? Since when is it the role of the government to decide whether or not you need or should take a class in finances? Since when did Ohioans think it was okay to grant government this kind of intrusion into our daily lives?

Even if you think payday lenders should be restricted by state law to certain interest rates, how can you possible approve of giving the government such authority over peoples’ lives?

The BBB has recently proposed a subjective “A” to “F” rating system of businesses and was planning on giving payday loan stores a “problematic” rating.  This rating system has yet to be implemented, but is under consideration.  The CFSA and payday lending industry is not going to take this lying down.  James McIntyre, council for the CFSA sent a strongly worded letter to the BBB.  Hopefully the BBB and it’s member businesses will wise up to what a bad idea this rating system is.  Click here to read the letter.

Eventually you have to pay back what you borrow and most of the time paying back includes a fee for the privilege of spending someone else’s money, be it an upfront fee like a payday loan or an interest based fee like a credit card.  In the last few years it seems like consumers and banks alike have forgotten this, leaving us in the situation we are now.

Now, after giving people more free credit than they ever needed (this pundit still gets 4 card offers a week), the credit card companies are reminding their clients to “use it responsibly“…a little to late, guys.

Banks are lowering limits on credit cards among other things.  

This reader really liked the essay on “Payday Loans and Banks.”

Brilliant. Insightful. Like all tools, payday loans can be used or misused depending on the user. We don’t take hammers off the market even though clumsy folks like me frequently hurt ourselves.   craig-parr-com220-essay 

 

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, a motley collection of elitists and hippies, doesn’t like the new Ohioans for Financial Freedom ad that focuses on job losses.   They say it plays to people’s economic fears.

No kidding you nitwits!  Ohio is competing with Michigan to become America’s first “third-world” state. Do you think economic fear is not a reasonable response to potentially losing 6,000 jobs? 

Check it out at Ohioans4financialfreedom.com. 

We’re talking about the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, which got through he House recently and is awating a vote in the Senate..  Among other things it will:

-Prohibit credit-card companies from charging consumers penalty interest rates (a hiked up rate for other, non credit-card debts).
-Changing interest rates whenever and however they want.
-Changing interest rates retroactively.
-Limitations on two-cycle billing. Credit Slips gives an example: “In month one you charge $600 and pay it off in full at the end of the month. In month two, you charge $500 and pay off $400. Interest accrues as if on a balance of $700, even though you only owe $100.”
-Limitations on multiple overdraft fees.

Good start.