Press Releases

During the surge of media attention on today's historic meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama, it is important to note that only days before His Holiness used his own moral authority to express concerns for the current financial crisis. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), the Pope speaks to the developments that led to...

Washington, DC - A full three quarters of the payday industry's loan volume is generated by borrowers who, after repaying one payday loan, must take out another before their next paycheck, new Center for Responsible Lending research shows. Payday churning?repeat borrowing of what payday lenders market as a short-term loan of a few hundred dollars?has been well documented. But the...

Payday lenders create their own demand with loan terms that generate rapid re-borrowing A full three quarters of the payday industry's loan volume is generated by borrowers who, after repaying one payday loan, must take out another before their next paycheck, new Center for Responsible Lending research shows. The report comes on the eve of the California Senate Judiciary Committee...

Statement from Michael Calhoun, President, Center for Responsible Lending "Today the Supreme Court announced a decision that will play a major role in how and whether consumer protection laws are enforced. In Andrew Cuomo vs. the Clearing House Association and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the court overturned lower court decisions, determining that states can enforce...

Sue Kwon interviews Ginna Green, from the Center for Responsible Lending about predatory profiling and payday lending. For more information: Ginna Green at (510) 379-5513 or ginna.green@responsiblelending.org.

Ellen Harnick, Senior Policy Counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending contributed this guest post to " The Hearing", a blog of the Washington Post. Over the past decade, federal bank regulators looked the other way as responsible loans were crowded out of the market by aggressively marketed financial products carrying hidden costs and fees. Tricky products, whose most "innovative"...

Payday lenders, in their battle to win legal authority to charge triple-digit interest rates, argue that stating their typical interest rate as 390 percent annually is misleading because their loans are short term. State policy-makers and even voters have specifically rejected this bogus argument but payday lenders are trying to use it again as the U.S. Congress debates how to...

National consumer protection organizations applauded President Obama's proposal to create a new federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency to ensure the safety, fairness and sustainability of credit. The agency would have broad powers to ensure that credit and payment products do not have predatory or deceptive features that can harm consumers or lock them into unaffordable loans. "The international economic crisis...

"We commend the Administration for its innovative plan for protecting America's families from abusive lending practices, including those that led to the current mortgage crisis, as well as those involving costly overdraft bank fees and other small loans. As our country grapples with the current financial meltdown and its epidemic of foreclosures that have crippled the economy, we must address...

Consumers have the deck stacked against them when they are forced into mandatory arbitration by their credit card issuer or other financial services provider, an analysis by the Center for Responsible Lending confirms. Many consumers don't even know that the contracts they sign for most credit cards, auto loans and other small loan products come with hidden clauses that require...