Tag Archive for ‘payday lending’
Even Bloomberg “Loves” BROKE
Well, I’m not sure what Mayor Mike thinks of BROKE but it was sweet to log on Twitter a few days back and read this tweet posted by the book review editor at Bloomberg News: “Bloomberg’s Jim Pressley, master reviewer of all finance books, loves ‘Broke USA’ by @grivlin” Lots of quotables in this review [...]
Payday: “like mosquitoes adapting”
Sure, sure, everyone was focused on whether Ohio would go for Obama or McCain in November 2008 but the question that drew me to the state a couple of times that fall was whether voters there would side with the payday lenders, who were seeking the right to continue charging fees that worked out to [...]
Excerpt in Slate’s “The Big Money”
Click here to read about Tim Thomas, who owns Daddy’s Money Pawn Shop in Wichita, Kansas. I met Thomas at the annual check cashers convention in Las Vegas. What I loved about talking with him was his complete candor about the dollars and cents of the poverty industry, walking me through the various fees he [...]
Pioneers of Subprime: Allan Jones and the Payday Loan
I write about Allan Jones – W. Allan Jones, Jr., if I were still on staff at The New York Times – in a piece for The Huffington Post. The Cliff’s Notes version of that post: Let’s just say that Mr. Jones (pictured) and those around him are not the most progressive bunch on issues [...]
BROKE ‘dissects,’ ‘eviscerates’ the ‘vulture finance’ industry
“Rivlin opens up, dissects and eviscerates the gigantic industry of vulture finance…a fascinating book.”
Poverty, Inc. Asks, ‘Why Us?’
The subprime credit card issuer charging interest rates of 25 percent or more. All those subprime auto lenders charging 20 or 22 or 25 percent a year in interest for a car loan. Others in the poverty industry. All are saying the same thing: We didn’t cause the Great Recession of 2008 so why is [...]
Planet Money and the Payday Loan
I love the way this podcast from the talented folks at NPR’s “Planet Money” opens: with an ad the payday lending industry created to oppose a range of reform measures working their way through Congress (the subject of my last blog entry). Except here, when the industry is calling the shots, they’re not payday lenders [...]
Payday Lenders Confront Mortality
Why the $40-billion-a-year payday lending industry fears financial reform on Capital Hill. As the Senate nears a vote on a financial reform package, I wrote this piece for the Huffington Post. Less popular than the country’s cigarette makers, and charging fees that can top 652 percent if expressed as an annual interest rate, the payday [...]
