Everyone by now should be well aware of the mix of necessity and usury associated with the payday lending industry.

And, they should also be aware of the feeble attempts to regulate it.

Comedian John Oliver on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, tore apart the industry in the below news segment.

In the clip, he cites examples of interest rates exceeding 1900% in some cases. Yes, you heard that correctly, to which Oliver replies:

“Even the most demanding, abusive football coach only ask for 110%,” he said.

Of course, the real problem with payday loan is it looks the borrower in a never-ending cycle of debt, or so it must feel for the borrower.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau presented this graph to show how one payday lender ACE Cash Expresslooks to capitalize on keeping borrowers in a circle of debt.

“Basically, payday loans are the Lay’s potato…

From Lynn Szymoniak website:

On August 6, 2014, I travelled to Decatur, GA to testify for the defense in the trial of Mark Anthony Harris, Timothy Franzen, Mariam Asad and Daniel Hanley.  Mark Harris was a disabled Gulf War veteran who was evicted from his home in 2012, after losing his home to foreclosure. Franzen, Asad and Harris were members of Occupy Our Homes Atlanta who tried to help Mark Harris stay in his home with a mortgage modification.  The defendants were charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of justice and faced up to two years in prison.

When the prosecution rested its case, I took the witness stand on behalf of the defendants, was sworn in and began reciting my credentials.  I did not get very far.  Right after I told the jury that I had helped the Justice Department recover $95 million for HUD from four major banks…

U.S. Senator Carl Levin is preparing a last push to bring Wall Street’s big commodity traders to heel during his final months in office, wrapping up a nearly two year-long probe that could potentially reveal abuses in energy and metals markets.

Levin’s investigators have met with representatives from Goldman Sachs (>> Goldman Sachs Group Inc) and JPMorgan Chase (>> JPMorgan Chase & Co.) in recent weeks, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Executives from those companies may appear at a hearing as early as September, during which Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations would present the findings of the probe, the sources said.

Spokesmen for Goldman and JPMorgan declined to comment.

Specifically, Senate investigators have explored whether Wall Street has abused its commodities holdings at the expense of clients, consumers, the environment or the health of the market, according to the people familiar with the probe.

The probe’s…

By: Clinton Kirby and Glenn Augenstein

August 7, 2014

Readers of this site and/or those who otherwise follow the news about Mary McCulley may recall the interview with her published here on May 7, 2014, titled: “The $6 Million Woman: Interview With Mary McCulley.”

The May 7, 2014 story was published the day before a hearing to determine whether or not Mary would be released from prison. For reasons of discretion the entirety of the interview was not printed.  Why give the government anything to use against her in the hearing the next day?

This led to some confusion about the nature of what actually happened in Mary’s case, and we received a number of emails about some of those issues.  Had we decided to publish the interview in its entirety, the confusion would have been kept to a minimum.  The questions we received ranged from the nature of the…

“The failure to update a credit report to
17 show that a debt has been discharged is also a
18 violation of the discharge injunction if shown to be
19 an attempt to collect the debt. Because debtors
20 often feel compelled to pay debts listed in credit
21 reports when entering into large transactions, such
22 as a home purchase, it should not be difficult to
23 show that the creditor, by leaving discharged debts
24 on a credit report, despite failed attempts to have
25 the creditor update the report, is attempting to
1 collect the debt.”

Furthermore, by failing on a systematic basis to
12 correct the credit reports, as alleged in the complaint,
13 Chase is enhancing its purchasers’ ability to collect on
14 the debt, which is, after all, charged-off debt when
15 purchased, with a relatively high, I can infer, prospect
16 of the…

According NBC News, the number of people who make that grim decision jumped 253 percent between 2005 and 2010.

“Foreclosure may be exceptionally stressful, because it is very protracted and consists of multiple negative events,” said Katherine A. Fowler, a CDC researcher and lead author. “… Other studies show that people tend to become more depressed about negative life events for which they feel personally responsible, and for which they can’t control the outcome.”

So-called living wills submitted by big banks are “not credible” and have to be revised by next July, federal regulators said on Tuesday.

The Dodd-Frank financial reforms require certain big banks to submit plans detailing how they would wind themselves down in the event of a crisis. The 11 institutions subject to the rule submitted first-round plans in 2012 and revisions in 2013.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said each bank had specific shortcomings, and that all banks had a few in common—among them unrealistic assumptions and a failure to identify necessary changes in their structures.

Based on its review, the FDIC said “the plans submitted by the first-wave filers are not credible and do not facilitate an orderly resolution under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.”

The regulator gave the banks til July 1, 2015 to file plans that “demonstrate that the firms are making significant progress to address all the…

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been long viewed as one of the most corrupt of American institutions – and that’s saying a lot. Putting aside all the accusations with regard to silver manipulation in recent years, the most stunning controversy occurred back in 2010 when a retiring judge accused the other remaining judge of being a total bought and paid for Wall Street crony.

The retiring judge was George Painter, who accused fellow judge Bruce Levine of not once ever ruling in favor of an investor in his 20 years on the bench. Not only that, but he claimed this was the result of a promise Levine made to Wendy Gramm, the former head of the CFTC and the wife of Phil Gramm. Phil Gramm was the Congressman who spearheaded the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, which is seen by many (including myself) as one of…