Eating Healthy for Life

Payday loans borrowers have civil rights. They've got the right to be aware of what their loan might cost them. They have the right to return the money they borrowed before the end of the day if they want they changed their minds. They have the right to know regarding dispute resolution. The witty thing is they have the right to know so much, that the majority of payday loan places will give you a couple pages of fine print on your rights and have you sign something at the bottom declaring you waive your right to a jury trial and you do so knowingly. Despite the volumes of information payday loan stores give, individuals find themselves going to payday loan stores and signing on the dotted lines in any case. It makes one wonder whether knowing is enough. How can one know and yet decide on something that has been compared to usury? Is it lack of knowledge, indifference, or something else altogether that keeps the industry in patrons at such a rate that the business seems to be flourishing while other businesses are struggling?

To imply the matter raises doubts is an understatement. It's difficult to have sympathy for an industry that seems to have flourished while the country is experiencing one of the toughest monetary crisis in current memory. The payday loan industry has certainly profited, having become in fact, "$28 billion industry nationally, according to the Center for Responsible Lending" (Associated Press, 2007). As the industry grows, it leaves us wondering how human would willingly pay 480 percent. Ray Fisman, in The Dismal Science, raises the query "Do people take out payday advance loans because they're worried, or since they don't understand the terms?" What Fisman almost asks but doesn't is are individuals stupid or don't they know that one $500 loan from these establishments potentially costs them $2692 a year? These seem to be the same people who then blog questions like, "Is my payday loan place going to have me arrested? Are these businesses preying then on the stupid?

So far, no one is forcing them to go. Or are they? It has been suggested that our present financial crisis has made it almost impractical for the average human to obtain a loan in any other fashion. In response to the push for more stringent borrowing practicing, traditional banks are turning away traditional borrowers. Perhaps it is not a coincidental connection between the push by banks to be stricter and the responsiveness of the fringe industry to grow as a conclusion. Cash loan lenders aren't stupid. Like every aggressive kid, they know there is a limit to how far you may push until you get, proverbially, smacked in the head.

President Obama has made a point of stating that America, to be economically strong, should be competent to have credit. If this is the case, we are looking at a new wave of Americans who have been forced out of the credit game, disenfranchiseed by a banking industry which was careless enough to loan to foolish customers forcing mainstream America to pick an even stupider path.