Usury Laws
Currently, there is a lot of controversy surrounding mini-banking and subprime lending practices, which include “payday loans” and high interest credit cards, because some feel these financial practices are not fair. The purpose of usury laws is to place a cap on excessive interest rates. It has become commonplace for many unsavory lenders to take advantage of current laws, which charge on excessive fees and rates, all in the name of profit. According to Elizabeth Warren, the government should return to usury laws, laws that go back to biblical times, and colonial times, where strong usury laws were in place. In 1979, a new law was discretely changed allowing financial companies to remove limits on rates. (Maher & Warren, 2010) By examining the strengths and weaknesses of usury laws, from a consequentialism and contractarianism perspective, we can see how there needs to be a balance in how companies engage in lending practices.
The problem with the current state of micro-banks and credit card companies is the amount of the fees and interest charges they are charging, usually to consumers who are poor and low wage earners, who desperately seek out these alternatives to take care of their financial needs. These practices leave them in a more desperate state because the extortionate fees, making it impossible to stay current on their payments, by driving disadvantage consumers in deeper debt. Some of these companies charge high percentage rates, and being late on
Michael Hudson tells the stories of victims with many compelling storied who were tricked into signing up for risky high-cost loans, as well as the greedy lenders who scarified the lives of their victims to gain as much money and power as they could. Hudson begins his story with an explanation of deregulation and the resulting emergence of subprime mortgage lending firms in California. Roland Arnall was a pioneer of the S&L industry, and Hudson traces how Arnall’s lending operations grew into the nation’s biggest subprime lending empire, Ameriquest.
The United States lending industry’s main focus has become accentuating profits; therefore, they have made it impossible to live without a credit card in today’s economy and to avoid being taken advantage of by the banks. James Scurlock, director and producer of the film, “Maxed Out”, devotes his movie to informing the audience of the credit card system and its many flaws and gives examples of people who are majorly affected by the pressure the lenders apply. Throughout the movie, numerous statistics, and expert testimonies are presented, as well as comparisons and appeals to emotion. Through the use of this support Scurlock, is able to convey his overall message and propose numerous minor arguments that clarify
Richard Fairbank and Nigel Morris, both diligent entrepreneurs, started laying the bricks for their eventual successful company, Capital One, in the late 1980’s. They both worked in the Virginia-based “Signet Bank”. Fairbank started noticing trends in the financial industry that he felt Signet was missing out on. These opportunities were in the credit card industry. He, as well as all of Signet Bank knew that the credit card industry was very risky, but Fairbank was ready to take a chance in this, what can be, highly profitable field.
I am going to look at one of America's most resilient industries. The Predatory lending better known as Payday loans, and even sometimes pass as car lenders and mortgage lenders. One in twenty households have taken one out at some point. And is estimated to be a nine billion dollar industry. With payday loan outlets are all over the place. The ethical question comes into place. When you question whether if receiving one of these loans can be a benefit or drag the person signing into the loan deeper in debt. Im very interested on this subject because I believe that payday loans can be very useful and benefit the general public, if we put in place very specific laws and restrain what lenders can do making sure that there is
The world is full of financial hardship, and American society possesses a great deal of controversy concerning lending. Unfortunately, short term lending, such as payday loans or title loans, creates a structural void within American society. According to Wikipedia, “Structural inequality is defined as a condition where one category of people are attributed an unequal status in relation to other categories of people” (wilipedia.com). When working class Americans apply for a payday, the unequal status between upper and middle class possess a bigger separation financially. The never-ending process of a short term financial fix becomes lifelong debt. Thus, middle class society becomes lower class society. Eventually, working class society will struggle to say above the poverty line. In addition to an imbalance in society classes, short term lending targets consumers who life paycheck to paycheck. In Rigging the Game by Michael Schwalbe, the author explains the reproduction of inequalities. Schwalbe discusses the different kinds of capitals human, social, and cultural (10). The three capitals unknowingly shape Americans social system. Many businesses capitalize on these capitals knowing no laws or regulation exists to stop them from capitalizing on individuals who no faults of their own were born into these unfair capitals. As a result, short term lenders possess the ability to have extremely high interest rates and outrageous fine print penalties because there is little
Predatory lending has caused many conflicts in the American society. Victims who fall for predatory lending are
Are wars still being fought by children. One could argue “no”, but others will say “yes”. Men go into war everyday, but many are not even fully grown. In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, he uses some of his own personal experiences to show the realities of war by examples of innocence, masculinity, and humanity through his main character Billy Pilgrim. Billy can supposedly time travel after being kidnapped by aliens from Tralfamadore and uses it to travel to his time in WWII were he experienced the bombing of Dresden and also travels to his past and future where he can visit other moments in his life.
Nowadays it 's very easy to come across some sort of payday loan advertisement. Whether you 're watching television, reading an online article, listening to the radio, or driving to the grocery store – payday loans are everywhere. They offer fast money for those times when you need it most and often don 't check your credit history. However, they do have high interest rates which means you may end up paying more than you initially borrowed. It 's no wonder then that they are such a hot topic issue among Texans since even the generally uninvolved have some sort of opinion about them. It 's of such importance that legislators have introduced a bill that promises to address the issue. What does the bill do, and how would proponents and opponents of the bill argue for and against it? In this essay I will answer both of these questions by explaining what I would do given their positions. I will also cover how I would react to these groups if I was a Texas legislator.
As a topic for this research paper, I decided to analyze the ethics behind the recent mortgage crisis in the United States. Banks were approving people for loans very easily, to people they knew would not be able to pay them back. Thus, many people were buying homes, missing payments, getting foreclosed on, and ruining what credit they had. Throughout this paper I intend to show how the practices that the banks were using were unethical. I will show who stakeholders were, and analyze them through Utilitarian and Kantian standpoints.
The state’s lawmakers felt that borrowers would always need small loans, and banning them would only make consumers turn to riskier finance schemes such as borrowing from unscrupulous lenders and organized criminals. The state now permits these lenders to make reasonable profits by charging higher interest rates “to allow lenders who meet the conditions of this chapter a rate of charge sufficiently high to permit a business profit.”
Quick, easy cash: payday loan companies are enticing individuals with flashing signs on thousands of streets around the world. Skyrocketing interest rates with percents in the hundreds are drowning out low to moderate income civilians within months. Whilst the Conservative government held power, they lifted a usury law that banned interest rates higher than 60 percent, allowing payday companies to be exempted from any criminal sanctions. Consequently, the industry took advantage of the opportunity immediately: interest rates raised as high as five hundred and forty percent. With two week loans, approximately a quarter of the loans default. Although while average companies see this as a disadvantage: payday loan industries feed on consumers
At some point during person’s life, he or she may find himself or herself in some sort of financial misfortune. In such instances, payday lending can be a convenient, instant, and short-term option one may want to consider. The speed, ease, and convenience associated with payday lending enables an individual to get out of trouble quick, which has resulted in payday lending consistently growing in popularity over the last couple of decades. Since the early to mid 1990s, the payday lending industry has continuously grown in popularity as well as quantity. In fact, there are currently more than 20,000 payday lenders in the nation, which is more than all of the McDonald’s, Walmarts, and Home Depot stores combined. These loans, which are given by payday advance stores, check cashers, and pawnshops, are cash advances consisting of relatively small amounts of money, usually accompanied by high interest rates, against an individual’s next paycheck. Payday lending gives individuals the opportunity and benefit of providing them with the financial support they may need in times of desperation or crisis. With this being said, however, the prosperity experienced by payday lending has been rivaled only by its notoriety, as banks, national and state governments, and consumers have contended that payday lenders exploit and take advantage of low-income individuals and minorities inevitably trapping them into a cycle of never-ending debt.
Whilst a critical part of consumer spending, credit card companies are constantly accused of malicious legal contracts and schemes to increase profits. Without heavy regulation, these companies have the power to bankrupt millions of Americans that rely on credit cards in their daily lives. However, after the introduction of The Credit Card Act of 2009, these accusations represent an inability to accept responsibility for financial blunders on the consumer’s behalf. Due largely in part to the government’s strict regulations, credit card companies should not be at fault for the student credit card debt crisis. Credit card companies remain blameless for student credit card debt as a result of
Countless people within our world note the constitution of the United Kingdom as an admirable example of a democracy existing with an uncodified constitution, arguably one of only two in the world- seeing as there are at least several other countries that maintain uncodified features. Arguably there are several strengths to the UK constitution, such as its flexibility, the fact that it has democratic rule, implements effective government and that it is based on history and tradition. On the other hand, it debatably has its weaknesses: centralization, its occasional incoherency, lack of protection of rights and the rise of elective dictatorships have backed criticism. Firstly the main strength of the British constitution is its flexibility,
Between 1999 to 2004, more than two dozens of US states ranging from North Carolina to South Carolina, California to New York passed various forms of anti-predatory lending laws stipulating a lower interest rate threshold requiring credit disclosure (Starkman, 2014:202) in an effort to respond ferociously to lawless lending practices at Wall Street and hold Wall Street originators of MBS to account. Critical, hardest-hitting investigative stories were prevalent during this time. When the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) conducted cases against the most notorious names in the subprime lending industry, i.e. Citigroup, JP Morgan, Delta Funding Corp., etc., many business newspapers also considered abusive lending their central beat and published a wide range of delicately-told stories going into the dubious and execrable practice of Wall Street banks in impressive depth (“Easy Money: Subprime Lenders Make Killings Catering to Poorer Americans. Now Wall Street Is Getting in on the Act”, BusinessWeek, 4/24/00; “Along with a Lender, Is Citigroup Buying Trouble?”, NYT, 23/10/00; “Fed Assesses Citi Group Unit’s $70m in Loan Abuse”, NYT, 5/28/04; etc.) . These articles put individual banks engaging in the foray of subprime lending under the spotlight with real information about secret sources of money and the compensation culture that