Steve, thanks. Sorry I didn’t answer your earlier direct questions. First, I am all for cracking down on the Mafia. Second, I don’t take as dim a view of pawn shops as I do of payday lenders. In general, the current rules are OK by me.
Why do I have less of a problem with pawn shops? Because, even though the pawn is a “loan,” the pawner can walk away from it and forfeit the collateral, without necessarily needing to flip their loan.
On the other hand, payday lenders’ business model DEPENDS on people failing to pay the first loan and flipping it into an ongoing and escalating. It’s like crack in that regard.
Yes, desperate folks get ripped off…that won’t change. I am saying that SOME limits on what people can rip them off for are reasonable. So, far from pushing folks into worse alternatives, I am actually advocating taking what I see as one of the worst alternatives off the table in the first place. But, I have no doubt others disagree.
Man, I did NOT mean to type so much.
(P.S. I have not needed the kinds of “services” provided by a payday lender in some time, but I will admit that I have been check-to-check and had to push basic expenses forward in the not-too-distant past.)
