News Topic: Payday & Title Lending

Received the automated call to my cell phone yesterday morning, whereupon my phone recorded a 45 second message. Not only am I approved for a payday loan in the amount of up to $1,500, I apparently previously applied for a payday loan, and given that ... Read full article

Why doesn’t payday lending violate the FTC’s Credit Practices Rule (16 C.F.R. 444.2)?  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.   ... Read full article

Why doesn’t payday lending violate the FTC’s Credit Practices Rule (16 C.F.R. 444.2)?  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.   ... Read full article

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new study (published 3/25/14) regarding payday loans has received substantial press coverage over the past couple days. The study focuses on repeat customers and finds that 80% of payday loans effectively ... Read full article

 To question number one, it looks that way. According to Kim Chapman and Carter Dougherty at Bloomberg, as well as other news outlets, Director Richard Cordray has announced his intention to move forward with regulations aimed at lenders that make small ... Read full article

The payday loan industry is running scared these days; the industry definitely feels that it is in the CFPB's cross-hairs. Accordingly, it is not surprising to see the industry trumpeting a new poll of payday borrowers' attitudes about the ... Read full article

The CFPB just settled an enormous enforcement action against payday lender Cash America. Under the settlement, Cash America will pay $5 million in penalties and $14 million in refunds to overcharged customers. ... Read full article

Just as I was getting ready to roll out an article agreeing with Creola Johnson and explaining why Congress should implement a 36% cap, like the Military Lending Act , for all of us, the Dealbook rolled out this story .  A ... Read full article

Gretchen Morgenson is asking some interesting questions about where the money comes to fund predatory loans. The issue boils down to this:  the most questionable consumer is not done by depositories.  It's done by finance companies or (prior to 2008) ... Read full article

Carter Dougherty added last week to the many recent articles ( here and here ) on regulators who are cracking down on internet lending, both state and federal. First, the Justice Depart ... Read full article

Given the many ways in which payday lenders have been able to transform themselves   into title lenders and installment lenders, and to otherwise avoid state law,  l try not to get too optimistic that high-cost lending practices  will be curbed. ... Read full article

Readers might recall that back in November, I blogged about a case in which the unconscionability doctrine was used to invalidate one lender’s entire book of payday and installment loans. The post described how the court found that FastBucks employees ... Read full article

Consumer financial education , disclosure , and defaults all dispensed with in my prior posts, shall we move on to “substantive” regulation, dare I even say “usury”? ... Read full article

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Banks and payday lenders have be close pals for a while now. ... Read full article

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If financial education classes and lab-tested disclosures are unlikely to help consumers in their real-world financial decisions, what about field-tested targeted education/disclosure? Exciting work by Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse shows that ... Read full article

A little something more to chew on while you are chewing off your fingernails over tonight’s election news. As reported on Turtle Talk this morning, Oregon and Washington are none too pleased about tribal payday lenders making loans to citizens of their ... Read full article