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Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Usury reform going front burner? The Hill, "Ocasio-Cortez says bill would 'destroy' predatory payday loan industry." NakedCapitalism, "Why You Should Back the Sanders/AOC Plan to Cap Credit Card Interest Rates at 15%, Re-Launch the Postal Savings Bank."

Links to the two headline items, respectively here and here.

If payday lenders were tanked, would it in any way be a worse world? If a leech sucking blood from your leg is removed, is that a bad thing?

Beyond such analogy, if you read the linked items, the post office banking suggestion does not seem to yet be embodied in specific legislation posted in an easily found manner; but Bernie posts a pdf of "The Loan Shark Prevention Act," grounded on the simple proposition that any imposition of interest beyond fifteen percent is unconscionable; (yet it is being done unchecked and with regularity these days).

Whether such a bill has any chance is a question apart from whether it is just and overdue.

Further covereage: The Intercept; GQ; DownWithTyranny; observer.com; FOX; a Reddit thread linking here.

A sobering websearch result; as cause to view payday lending predatory approaches as set for success; even if readers of Crabgrass might believe such an avenue for emergency cash would only attack fools. Desparate people short four hundred bucks seem far too numerous to all be fools. Something put them there, which needs fixing, but in the wealthiest nation human history has ever seen, a four hundred buck threat should not be existential. Politics made it so, and politics that does that to human beings needs to be reformed; end of story.

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mark of the beast