A group in Mississippi made a few errant remarks regarding payday lending in an op-ed, but the main focus of the article is promoting financial education. The Pundit sees that as a noble goal.

The Foundation for the Mid South believes that financial education is essential. Every resident should have a basic understanding of financial concepts and what it takes to live within their means.

An anti-poverty coalition in Dallas wants to end poverty by shutting down businesses, taking away jobs and ending a source of credit for consumers. Does anyone else see a flaw in that plan?

 The Anti-Poverty Coalition of Greater Dallas is a new coalition that seeks to move 250,000 people out of poverty permanently by 2020 by coordinating efforts to keep people from falling into poverty and increasing pathways out of poverty.”

One of those ways, insists James and those attending this afternoon’s presser, is shutting down and running out of town payday lenders …

A city council in Utah has placed restrictions on payday lenders.

The ordinance caps the number of businesses allowed in the industry, while eventually lowering the number to 13, and prevents them from existing within 1,500 feet of each other.

Hypothetically speaking, what do you think the reaction would be if the same rules were placed on fast food businesses? No golden arches can be located near a Burger King? Food for thought …

A letter to the editor challenges The Clarion-Ledger on its attacks on payday lending. Good read.

Can someone please explain how it is “entrapment” to offer loans to walk-in customers at rates that are posted on the wall with signs literally six-feet tall?

A CRL “study” claims that payday lenders are less popular than liquor stores:

“Polls and elections from across the country have demonstrated over the years that the only folks who really like payday loans are payday lenders,” said Paul Leonard, director of the California office of the Center for Responsible Lending, which sponsored the poll.

A local official in Tennessee wants to add a tax to payday loans. An articulate representative of the industry explains why that is a bad idea.

Ryan Harris, a spokesman for Cleveland, Tenn.-based Check Into Cash, which operates a store in East Ridge, said the company would not welcome the fees.

“Our company pays numerous different kinds of taxes,” Harris said. “Each transaction is regulated at the state and federal level, as well as providing jobs and paying rent to local landlords. Obviously we would be strongly opposed to being singled out for any kind of additional tax.”

The Pundit didn’t expect to get a trilogy out of this series. An Alabama city councilwoman says she is now giving second thought to lumping tattoo shops, payday lenders and palm readers into a restrictive zoning class.

… In a surprise statement to News 5 today, Councilwoman Pattiesue Carranza says she isn’t comfortable with government regulating legal and legitimate trade, despite voting in favor of the ordinance.

“I’ve been second guessing my vote since Tuesday,” says Carranza. “Unless you have proof these businesses are bad for the community, we really don’t have a leg to stand on to regulate them. What we need is less government and less restrictions.”

Exactly! And by the way, how did payday loans and tattoo shops get lumped together? Weird …

A city council in Mississippi got together every business it didn’t like and shuffled them into a far-flung area of the city through zoning.

Attracting the most attention, however, is a new designation, C-4 or alternative commercial. It’s the future home of new pawn shops, check-cashing businesses, title and payday loan stores, tattoo parlors, gold and precious metals purchasing operations, or adult-themed businesses.

If you do, are you siphoning money out of your local economy and feeding the city of Bentonville, Ark.? That argument gets used a lot for payday lenders, including from a city councilman in Lubbock, Texas, but it makes no sense.

Todd Klein, District 3 City Councilman said, “Responsible change at the state legislative level will not only help those people that are making these loans but quite frankly whenever that money is siphoned out of our community into these out of city or out of state companies in considerable numbers, that’s money that doesn’t circulate in our economy.  These people don’t get ahead and we also as a community lose out.”

If that’s the case pass an ordinance that says only Lubbock-based businesses can operate in Lubbock and see how that works.

So says The Associated Press. Not sure why though.

Local leaders planning to gather in Richmond to urge legislators to cap the interest that can be charged on short-term, high-interest loans have canceled their event.