An interview with the FTPLS
June 29, 2009 | industry | Comments (0)Skepticism of proposed regulations
June 29, 2009 | federal legislation, industry | Comments (0)From Robert Samuelson’s column in Newsweek:
Though these proposals sound sensible, they have potential drawbacks. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute argued that the very largest financial institutions would become the protected and pampered wards of the state. “Larger firms will squeeze out smaller ones,” he said. Consumer regulation sounds great. But if the protections are cumbersome and expensive, consumer credit will, paradoxically, become costlier. Lenders will compensate by raising interest rates or lending only to the safest borrowers.
Loved this letter
June 29, 2009 | Wisconsin, industry, regulation | Comments (0)Was in the Wausau Daily Herald this weekend:
Support payday lenders
You mean losing half my income to state and federal taxes before I can even see it and getting nothing in return is not predatory?
While the annual interest rates of these small cash loans can be over 500 percent, how many of these loans go unpaid for over a year? Not too many. So in other words we’re supposed to toss out an entire work force all in the name of a few deadbeats who can’t make a payment but can make a lot of noise. Nothing new there. We’re constantly told to support things that cater to the lowest common denominator.
This argument is about competition between lenders and little else. Eliminate that competition and we’re going to see some hurting around for a lot of folks who could use a little help in a pinch.
Patrick Roets,
Merrill
Too many cooks spoil the broth
June 29, 2009 | alternatives, industry | Comments (0)Or as the top banker at JP Morgan is putting it:
Too many regulators will only increase costs and reduce credit opportunities for consumers, JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon warned in a column he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Controversy in Chicago
June 29, 2009 | Illinois, industry | Comments (0)A local payday lending is making loans to the unemployed. From Crains Business:
PLS Financial Services Inc., with 47 local branches and $219 million in revenue last year, is marketing its high-rate, short-term loans to the unemployed, aiming to capitalize on the worst recession since the early 1980s. With metropolitan Chicago’s unemployment rate up to a seasonally adjusted 10.5% in May from 6.3% a year before, that’s a lot of potential customers.
“If you believe there’s nothing wrong with (this type of) loan, why should (the unemployed) be any different from someone who has any other form of income?” says Robert Wolfberg, who shares the title of PLS president with his brother Dan.
Yet the new push doesn’t sit well with consumer advocates, who have fought PLS and other payday lenders in Springfield to try to cap the rates they can charge and are quick to protest on moral grounds.
I believe they couldn’d discriminate based on source of income eve if they wanted to.
One-man band
June 29, 2009 | Uncategorized | Comments (0)Larry Meyers hits hard on federal and state governments.
Virginia update:
June 28, 2009 | Virginia, industry, regulation | Comments (0)New rules take effect on Wednesday.
Wrong, but honest
June 28, 2009 | Wisconsin, employees, industry | Comments (0)The Wausau Daily Herald wrote an editorial last week in favor of a 36% rate cap. The paper revisits the issue today and admits that the rate cap is a ban. Progress, I guess, of some sort:
….Rather than precipitating a trickle of store closures at the margins, what we would see would be a wave of closures beginning the day after the law took effect, she said.
For those of us who regard payday lending as predatory, this is more a feature than a bug. But it is worth being honest about what the bill’s impact would be.
The writers offer no solution to the problem of access to short-term credit.
Bite of bank fees
June 28, 2009 | Washington Post, alternatives, industry | Comments (0)Has caught the attention of the Washington Post. From the front-page Sunday story:
Customers are paying more to maintain a checking account and withdraw cash from an out-of-system ATM, and when they bounce a check. To make up for declining revenue, many banks are boosting fees and are requiring higher minimum balances for many accounts.
The institutions also have made it easier for customers to spend more than is in their accounts — and then hit them with substantial fees, a practice so vexing to consumer advocates that the Federal Reserve is thinking of regulating it.
Best move the Payday Pundit ever made was joining the Congressional Federal Credit Union. (The Payday Pundit worked on Capitol Hill for many years.)
“Suck an egg”
June 26, 2009 | Center for Responsible Lending, industry | Comments (0)That’s what the Fairness to Payday Lenders Society has to say to Center for Responsible Lending about its latest drivel.
