CRL in the News

Mary Schmidt, a lifelong resident of the St. Louis region, had a good job with a school district. In an attempt to cover a financial shortfall, she took out a payday loan of a few hundred dollars. Unable to afford to repay the loan principal and fee, she repeatedly reborrowed — more than a dozen loans in total. Each time, she was hit with a fee. She was “drowning” in fees far in excess of the original loan amount. The payday lender caught Mary in its debt trap. She couldn’t make her car payment, student loans or mortgage. She was short on money for food and got behind on utilities. Mary’s

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should not reverse a common-sense rule that protects payday lending borrowers. This month, the bureau proposed rolling back a 2017 rule that prohibits loans to borrowers who cannot demonstrate an ability to pay them back. That essentially prevents payday lenders from intentionally making short-term loans to weak borrowers then repeatedly flipping the debt to amass extra fees. It was a high-profit racket for predatory lenders before the rule, and it will return if the rule is rolled back.

In recent months, many economists and lawmakers have frequently touted how the nation’s economy is performing really well. Often citing historically low unemployment rates, I’ve always felt that such pronouncements failed to consider the untold millions of Americans who are eking out a living on low or no raises, or others who work multiple jobs trying to piece together a living for their families. But new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, offers hard evidence that a key sector of the economy is showing signs of distress: auto loans. At the end of 2018, 7 million consumers were

Rhythm & News interview with Charlene Crowell, with the Center for Responsible Lending, about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending reversal of their payday lending policy. Interview by Chris B. Bennett.

Here’s another reminder that, when it comes to the Trump administration, it’s more important to watch what the White House does rather than what it says. The payday lending industry scored a huge win when the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed to weaken Obama-administration rules governing an industry that makes its money by exploiting people in desperate financial straits. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what the agency was created to do. But, hey, this is Donald Trump’s Washington.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — One of Shekinah Mitchell's favorite memories in Richmond is walking out of her favorite corner store 10 years ago and serendipitously meeting the man who would become her husband. Today, that corner store no longer exists. Mitchell's story is part of a larger pattern that policy experts said is becoming increasingly common in Richmond and around the nation: gentrification.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said its proposal to roll back regulation for payday lenders will give consumers more access to credit — but as far as senior citizens are concerned, that may not be a good thing. The Obama-era regulation, which was finalized in 2017 and was to be implemented in August of this year, required payday lenders to determine if the borrower could afford loan payments and still meet basic living expenses. The government agency said this week it plans to rescind its underwriting provisions and delay the rule’s compliance date to November 2020. Kathy Kraninger

The benefit of the doubt new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger received from some consumer advocates evaporated this week when she indicated she would ax payday lending standards developed under Obama CFPB Chief Richard Cordray. On the day last December Kraninger was confirmed by the Senate Cordray appeared to ask his followers not to oppose her from the get-go with a tweet: “Like me, she had not run an agency before.” Two weeks later, came a tweet pat on the back: “A very reasonable and practical decision by the new CFPB director to scrap most aspects of the costly

The cycle of the payday loan is a well-known horror story. A person needs money, and they need it fast, so they visit a payday lender with names like EZ Cash or Cash Express. They get their money on the spot. The trouble comes later, when it’s time to repay the loan. Most borrowers default on that small-dollar loan, which is how EZ Cash profits—as the loan is renewed or rolled over and the fees rack up. One of the last regulations published under President Obama’s director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Richard Cordray, was a 2017 rule that would have curbed the most

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Wednesday proposed striking certain borrower safeguards from a 2017 regulation on short-term, high-interest loans. The bureau on Wednesday kicked off a proposal to loosen the bureau’s rule on “payday” loans, a measure meant to protect vulnerable consumers from bottomless debt.