Won't you reconsider Mister Won't you do this thing for me
Mr. Banker
-Lynyrd Skynyrd
I've written before that if you were a criminally minded sort in today's environment you'd be a fool to join the Mafia or other illicit organizations. These days, the benefit is no longer worth the cost. Working outside the law you have to worry about informants, violent paranoid co-workers, electronic surveillance up the wazoo, and long prison terms. That's no good. If you have wicked urges be smart and work inside the law. For example, if you want to assault or kill people, become a cop. You will be virtually untouchable.
If you want to help people gamble away their cash so that you can make a profit, open a liquor store and run the state sponsored lottery. People will give you money for nothing and thank you for the opportunity. And if you want to loan money at extortionate rates, changing or reinterpreting contract terms to your benefit while emptying your
The check arrived out of the blue, issued in his name for $1,200, a mailing from a consumer finance company. Stephen Huggins eyed it carefully. A loan, it said. Smaller type said the interest rate would be 33 percent.
Way too high, Huggins thought. He put it aside.
A week later, though, his 2005 Chevy pickup was in the shop, and he didn’t have enough to pay for the repairs. He needed the truck to get to work, to get the kids to school. So Huggins, a 56-year-old heavy equipment operator in Nashville, fished the check out that day in April 2017 and cashed it.
Most galling, Huggins couldn’t afford a lawyer but was obliged by the loan contract to pay for the company’s. That had added 20 percent — $536.88 — to the size of his bill.
“They really got me,” Huggins said.
“It’s basically a way of monetizing poor people,” said John Lafferty, who was a manager trainee at a Mariner Finance branch for four months in 2015 in Nashville. His misgivings about the business echoed those of other former employees contacted by The Washington Post. “Maybe at the beginning, people thought these loans could help people pay their electric bill. But it has become a cash cow.”
The market for “consumer installment loans,” which Mariner and its competitors serve, has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly as new federal regulations have curtailed payday lending, according to the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a nonprofit research group. Private equity firms, with billions to invest, have taken significant stakes in the growing field.
Among its rivals, Mariner stands out for the frequent use of mass-mailed checks, which allows customers to accept a high-interest loan on an impulse — just sign the check. It has become a key marketing method. The company’s other tactics include borrowing money for as little as 4 or 5 percent — thanks to the bond market — and lending at rates as high as 36 percent, a rate that some states consider usurious; making millions of dollars by charging borrowers for insurance policies of questionable value; operating an insurance company in the Turks and Caicos, where regulations are notably lax, to profit further from the insurance policies; and aggressive collection practices that include calling delinquent customers once a day and embarrassing them by calling their friends and relatives, customers said.
Finally, Mariner enforces its collections with a busy legal operation, funded in part by the customers themselves: The fine print in the loan contracts obliges customers to pay as much as an extra 20 percent of the amount owed to cover Mariner’s attorney fees, and this has helped fund legal proceedings that are both voluminous and swift. Last year, in Baltimore alone, Mariner filed nearly 300 lawsuits. In some cases, Mariner has sued customers within five months of the check being cashed.
Now as a Democrat presumably Geithner was supposed to be one of the "good guys" no? He used to speak against predator lending. Ha! His business model is of course benefiting from Trump driven changes in regulations around usury and payday loans. This is an excellent example of predatory capitalism or more descriptively vampire capitalism. People are making money not by providing capital for business expansion but by extracting every last cent from people who are already barely keeping their head above water.
To the extent that people were distraught that some voters in 2016 were cynical about differences between the major party candidates and the interests they represent, Geithner's business model and the apparent lack of opprobrium shown by Democratic politicians and consultants should explain at least part of that voter cynicism. When f*****g people out of their money is just acceptable good business practice, something is wrong with the moral basis of the entire American political-economy. Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
To the extent that people were distraught that some voters in 2016 were cynical about differences between the major party candidates and the interests they represent, Geithner's business model and the apparent lack of opprobrium shown by Democratic politicians and consultants should explain at least part of that voter cynicism. When f*****g people out of their money is just acceptable good business practice, something is wrong with the moral basis of the entire American political-economy. Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
