The op-ed at the Seattle Times is typical of the criticism that payday lenders endure. First of all, who the heck is Fred Corbit?  I mean, people might also say, “who the heck is Clark Reilly?”.  The difference between Corbit and myself is that Corbit doesn’t rely on any actual published data to make his [...]

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I love when elites at green sites put guilt trips on ordinary folks. Yes, these types of articles are needed to educate citified yuppies who love organic food and green living but are blithely unaware that these practices were routine in the days of their grandparents and remain routine in poorer areas of the country [...]

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The San Antonio Express News has published 3 opinion editorials and one letter to the editor in the past month, and they are all negative about payday loans.  This leads me to two thoughts.  The first is how slow must the news in San Antonio be to do this many opinions editorials on payday loans?  [...]

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Living outside the USA, I wonder if I would recognize my birthland if I return someday. We now see the NYTimes proposing that “we” get rid of the US constitution, which is standing in the way of what “we” want to do. AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching [...]

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Part one discussed the way the Philippines went along with American pressure to pass a US style family planning program whose aim (denied by the president) is to limit population control. Reality check: every “discussion” of the bill by the Manila elites includes lamentations about the high population growth, and even a few politicians have [...]

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Neocolonialism anyone? The Philippines passed an RH bill, a “Reproductive Health Bill” that requires medical personnel to push birth control on their patients, and all the US newspapers are rejoicing. The bill had the opposition of the powerful Catholic church, but in a country where the average number of kids per woman has fell from [...]

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Ah yes. It’s time for the yearly “War on Christmas”. Right wing rhetoric? Well, it’s a way to sell newspapers…. What has changed in the last ten years is that it is now politically correct to ridicule Christian belief. Yet the latest report is over the top: One NBC Medical Expert named Dr. Snyderman has [...]

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Lise Olsen’s 11/27 article in the San Antonio Express News misleads legislators and readers regarding payday loans (PDLs). Olsen and legislators should ask, “Why do people use these products when it is seemingly so expensive”? The facile answer: borrowers are stupid and make costly mistakes, resulting in the alleged “cycle of debt”. Yet people don’t [...]

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The Midland Reporter-Telegram lifts the body of the Better Business Bureau piece I wrote about a few days ago, and adds a few wrinkles. The author wonders aloud about different options when one is short on cash.  “Ask for an advance on your paycheck? Borrow money from friends or family? Try to negotiate with the [...]

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Here’s a strange little item from Jesse Martinez from KFOX14. Can you spot it? Mr. Martinez just assumes payday loans are bad. Is he coming from an unbiased perspective, per the post I made just prior to this one?  Methinks not. “A city representative wants to keep El Pasoans from falling into debt when it [...]

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This question was raised during a comment exchange at Loren Steffy’s blog. “Bias” is defined as “A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment”. The question is whether I am judging the issues impartially. Readers should ask if I look at both sides of the issue.  Do I examine the pros and [...]

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The Better Business Bureau’s Amy Fowler gives some great advice in their payday loan blog post.  Telling consumers to research a company’s reputation and read all fine print are always smart things to do. Alas, even the BBB can’t help but editorialize, claiming that payday and title lenders are “predatory”.  I don’t see how a [...]

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From the Daily Mail in London: Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’. Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults. But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food [...]

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Dear Loren: I read your and Olsen’s article on payday loans.  The services are indeed wildly popular.  In reading the OCCC’s reports, over a million loans were made in the first half of the year. So….if these loans are so “predatory”, then why do people keep using them?  Am I to believe that if someone [...]

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Back with more topics than I’ve ever squeezed into 10 minutes or less, “Consider This!” is back with a new episode. A friend of mine posted a graphic of Sen. Bernie Sanders with a  quote from him extolling the results of Social Security, with the tag, “Social Security has done exactly what it was designed [...]

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Have you ever heard of Prosper.com?  In its original incarnation, Prosper was a “peer-to-peer” lender?  Anybody could post a request for a loan on Prosper’s website, offer up a personal story, reasons for the loan, credit history and other information.  Prosper would use a proprietary scoring algorithm and let potential lenders know… (Read the rest [...]

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Another criticism about payday lending I read about is that some city or state has “more payday loan stores than McDonald’s or Starbucks”. To which I say… (Read the rest of the article by clicking HERE)

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I’m learning that payday loan opponents fall into three categories.  They appear to be The Politicians, The Activists, The Media, and The Uninformed.  Each have different motivations from what I can tell, but they are all manipulated by the Activist. The Activists always seem to be part of… (Read the rest of the article by [...]

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This is a bit outside the area of payday loans, but I think its relevant because it deals with a close cousin: auto title loans.  In this article and TV interview, a woman failed to make a payment on a loan using her car as collateral. By not repaying her loan on time, per the [...]

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So in this article, the author calls legal businesses as operating under “loopholes”.  That’s not true at all.   The law permits title lenders to operate, and they are regulated, in Texas.  It’s hardly “the wild west”. But what I don’t like here is this guy named Don Baylor, a “senior policy analyst” at the “Center [...]

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Here’s an interesting question that came up when I read this article. The state of Virginia came up with an alternative to payday lending called the VSELP loan.  Someone can borrow up to $500 and pay it off over 6 months at a 25% APR.  This sounds like… [You can read the rest of the [...]

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Jiminy Cricket read the story of his wooden charge in the newspaper.  He shook his head sadly at Rusty Collins, who apparently had mucked up the story of Pinocchio, so he set out to correct it, whistling all the way into town. Jiminy found ol’ Rusty lounging alongside The Fox, who was telling Rusty about [...]

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I’ve noticed that payday loan opponents seem to fixate on the idea of a 36% APR as somehow being “fair”, such as the reply from Samuel Bell to this post by an executive at Advance America.  I don’t see why 36% is special.  Why not 35%?  Or 37%?   Based on the fact that payday loan [...]

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I am all for financial education. In fact, I’d love to know if there was any way the federal government could actually mandate a high school and college class in basic economics and personal finance. I believe Americans are woefully undereducated about these topics. And I think the payday loan industry would agree with me. [...]

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One week from today on November 16, the first international event will be held at the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The COTA is the first purpose-built Formula One track in the U.S., so its opening has been highly anticipated for several years. The F1 event officially begins with practice day [...]

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Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley made his bones by removing Oregon payday lenders from the state by limiting their potential revenue to the point where they couldn’t do business. The result was a loss of several hundred jobs, millions in labor income, and many more millions in GSP. And it didn’t change a single thing about [...]

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If I am voting against the President, it is not racism but because he is going out of his way to persecute the Catholic church: The problem? The week after taking office, the President removed conscience rights regulations from the federal regulations. This means that the only thing standing between Catholics and Muslims from being [...]

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I’ve noticed a curious thing about lawmakers.  They decide that something is a problem and they pass a law to stop it.  Except they never seem to think one or two or three steps further. This article from the Austin Business Journal shows how city ordinances in Austin have chased out three payday loan stores [...]

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I’ve noticed the media in the United Kingdom is starting to pick up the same tone as their brothers in the US regarding payday loans.  That’s a shame. Look at this headline out of The Telegraph. The author said that taking out a payday loan top… (You can read the rest of the article by [...]

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Here’s a distressing story out of the Los Angeles Times. The advertisement that comes in the mail with a misleading pitch is bad enough.  One that effectively attempts to trick the receiver into taking out a payday loan is not only bad for the payday loan business, it’s bad for all business.  People will take [...]

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