Professors Steven M. Graves and Christopher L. Peterson
“What use is a Congress that eats “freedom fries” in the capital cafeterias but ties the hands of state regulators who hope to protect soldiers from predatory lending? For the great majority of the past century, American government protected servicemembers from high cost predatory loans with usury laws… Through federal preemption… these laws have given way to an environment where servicemembers are literally surrounded by lenders clamoring to charge annual rates averaging around 450 percent.”
Professors Graves and Peterson expressed this opinion in a paper published by the University of Florida…
Their paper, entitled Predatory Lending and the Military, closed with the following quote:
“Military personnel both in ancient history and contemporary America have chronic financial vulnerabilities owing to their demanding and semi-nomadic lifestyles. Inevitably, many struggling military personnel and their families find the temptation of short term financial quick fixes… too difficult to pass up. For the reasonable and caring, supporting the troops should include an emphatic return to the traditional usury laws insisted upon by previous American generations.”
The paper concluded that payday lenders target military personnel and found greater concentrations of payday lenders per capita near military populations.
Source: Predatory Lending and the Military: The Law and Geography of “Payday” Loans in Military Towns (Levin College of Law, University of Florida)
Recent Posts:
- 06/16/2008: Demographic Study of Online Payday Loan Consumers
- 05/26/2008: Daniel O’Sullivan
- 05/07/2008: Update: GoFastCash Goes Under?
- 04/24/2008: Update: Payday Loan Laws that Hurt Consumers
- 04/07/2008: Manitoba Public Utilities Board
Random Posts:
- 06/16/2006: Debt Treadmill
- 09/19/2006: Senator Jackie Speier
- 10/08/2006: Justice Minister Vic Toews
- 07/15/2006: Professor Howard Karger
- 09/28/2006: Bill Taylor