Tuesday 24 June 2008

U.S Payday lenders lied on petition

Payday lenders are currently facing a torrid time from state legislators in the U.S with several pursuing interest rate caps on payday loans. In Ohio, the state senate has voted to cap at 28%, and payday lenders are petitioning for a public vote on the issue in an attempt to overturn this. However, this appears to have hit the buffers as they have been found to have mis-represented the facts on the proposed petition.....

From The Plain Dealer: Cleveland, Ohio. 24th June 2008

Here's a stunner: Payday lenders resorted to falsehoods in their desperate attempt to continue gouging Ohioans with 391 percent interest rates.

That's what Ohio's new attorney general, Nancy Rogers, rightly concluded about language payday lenders wanted to use in asking voters to overturn a new law that caps their annualized interest rates at 28 percent.

Rogers ruled last week that payday lending supporters were not truthful in language they wanted to use on petitions aimed at forcing a November vote on the new law. Other parts of the language, she added, were also "inflammatory and unfair."

Leaders of the Reject House Bill 545 Committee need nearly 250,000 valid signatures to earn ballot status. But they cannot begin that process until Rogers approves the petition language. Last week's ruling requires payday lenders to rewrite and resubmit it.

No one should be surprised that an industry that drives desperate people deeper into debt by dangling short-term loans at disgustingly high interest rates would try to trick voters with deceitful language. Expect more of the same if this issue makes it to the November ballot.

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