A trade association representing the payday-lending industry declared
that these proposed rules, which would require lenders to either determine a borrower’s ability to repay a loan or set a limit of no more than three two-week loans in a row, would put thousands of lenders out of business.
It also ordered Mastercard and a partner to jointly pay $13 million in fines for “breakdowns
that left tens of thousands of economically vulnerable RushCard users unable to access their own money.”
Don’t expect President Trump to boast about any of these good deeds, which were all undertaken by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The bureau has also proposed restrictions on debt collectors
and payday lenders, who can sometimes legally charge interest rates exceeding what would be 400 percent annually for the two-week loans they provide to the working poor.
The Bureau of Resistance -
Three days after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the United States government fined a couple of Citigroup subsidiaries
$28.8 million for giving the runaround to tens of thousands of borrowers who were trying to avoid foreclosure on their homes.
In early February, a group of business leaders visited Trump at the White House, where the president promised to roll back
many of the regulations imposed after 2008, when the financial industry’s recklessness nearly sank the world economy.
These might include regulations on debt collectors, payday lenders and all those brand-name financial institutions
that keep unhappy customers out of court through “mandatory arbitration” clauses buried in consumer contracts, voiding the option of filing lawsuits.
