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Friday, April 14, 2017

Schadenfreude. If you can spell it, sometimes you may feel it.

This earlier Crabgrass post. Christians looking askance at payday lenders was the Daily Planet's report less than a year ago [italics added]:

In 2014, payday lending groups, including Burnsville-based Payday America, contributed a total of $59,743 in campaign contributions to state lawmakers, with Republicans accepting 75 percent of total contributions to the DFLers’ 25 percent, according to the Star Tribune.

But watchdog groups and economic justice advocates are persistent. In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed new guidelines in an effort to limit the scope of damage caused by payday lending institutions. The guidelines include rules like requiring lending institutions to ensure the borrower can repay the full amount of the loan (and still afford major expenses and obligations), or else the loan won’t be given.

PAYDAY AMERICA: Rixxman as not too sympathetic a person, hence, one arguably not deserving our sympathy.

Hopefully this is not just a ploy against closing-in creditors. Strib reported a resort to bankruptcy Chapter 11, (where Chapter 7 exists). Strib's report states:

The company — which operates 23 pawnshops in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas — reported on Wednesday that it owes between $10 million and $50 million to fewer than 1,000 creditors.

Pawn America President and founder Brad Rixmann, in a message to employees, said he plans to reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy stronger.

[...] The retail chain does not yet have a restructuring plan in place, so it has no details on what stores might close or if staff will be cut, the company said.

The company and its affiliated businesses, which started with a single store in Robbinsdale in 1991, now have about 450 employees who buy and sell used jewelry, electronics, computers, household items, sporting goods and other merchandise.

[...] The bankruptcy filing is driven by the challenges seen across the entire brick-and-mortar retail industry, said Pawn America spokesman Mike Erlandson.

Bankruptcy "is not a course any business wants to pursue," he said. "But if you just look at the retail sector in general, the closing of Macy's, Sears and J.C. Penney stores and the heightened competition of Wal-Mart and Target, [Pawn America's experience] is not unlike what you are seeing across all of retail."

Buying trends are shifting and there are differences between the shopping habits of baby boomers vs. millennials, Erlandson said. 

450 employees; fewer than 1000 creditors. Not reported, the overlap, if any, between those two groups. And, gall to analogize, WalMart, Target, et al.

And folks, remember, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was a payday lender fan. Not how it should be, but how it was/is/likely will continue to be. A screen capture, p.1 of 6 pages; click the thumbnail image to enlarge and read:

Hi ya, Debbie.
The quoted flak is the same Mike Erlanson who was a key Sabo staffer, and ran in Minnesota's CD5 when Sabo stepped down, but was defeated by Kieth Ellison. Lucky CD5. Democrats embracing payday lenders is not a very nice trend, if it is a trend and not a few bad apples.

Flaksite:

http://mnpublicaffairs.com/