th
 

The payday lending bans are outrageous. WTF is the matter with this country? We have to coddle our consumers so they don't get taken by financial outfits? If a payday lender discloses fully the terms of the loan, why on earth should the govt step in and play babysitter? I understand we need babysitters because Americans can't manage themselves, but its damned pathetic. These "regulatory" shackles the govt throws into the marketplace are soft forms of prohibition, and I think that over time, they've made people weak and dependent on courts and govt to get their back when they don't read the fine print.

I got mugged in the 2000 market meltdown. Buyer beware. You play, you lose, you learn not to play stupidly next time. I understand people who take out payday loans might be in duress, but if not a payday loan, they'd be putting themselves in hoc to Citibank or MBNA/BOA. Why should Citi and BOA have free reign to play that market sector while a smaller bank doing the payday loans gets jackhammered by regulators? I guess that's a function of who can afford the bigger lobbying firm.

The last thing we need in this country is to be stopping more areas of business by regulating/legislating them out of existence.

I know just how wildly unpopular this diatribe will be with just about everyone. But haven't we tried enough progressive fixes in this country over the past 50 years. People say "Oh, my, we can't have a fully free market where the people aren't protected by the govt." Really? How do you know that? We haven't tried, have we?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

So selling organs should be totally legal?

I don't want people to become totally destitute through these payday things, and really given the state of the schools and literacy, I'm not sure all people can do the math to figure out that at a certain rate of interest, they will end up borrowing every payday because each subsequent check is pretty much used up paying off the initial loan. I mean, people who become totally destitute frequently pee on the sidewalk and stuff, and I hate the smell of stale urine.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

did she show any remorse?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Then why should the credit card issuers be able to do the same thing to these people? It seems wildly inconsistent that cc issuers should enjoy the new bankruptcy bill's protections while payday lenders engaged in the same business - just through a different vehicle - should be put out of business. If we must have regulation, which I do recognize (although I think it can and should be downgraded substantially), either everybody has to stop loan sharking the poor, or nobody has to stop. Selective enforcement is just not acceptable.*

*And in this case, that term is an undertstatement. Now, the CC issuers are getting a gift from Congress while the local regulators are being allowed to slam the payday lenders.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

as a first step to not victimizing the weak, would you be willing to not respond to spank's or nfh's posts?

More Republicans for states' rights
 

It takes a Republican to think that food-safety regulation should be a ceiling, not a floor.

India Nuclear Deal
 

I guess I view the whole nuke world a little more skeptically. My view is that countries are eventually going to get nuke technology, so I'd rather them have with some oversight then on the black market or through China, Iran, Russia, etc. The warmer ties with India, the world's largest democracy, also have many benefits for us. It's a potentially HUGE consumer market, plus having a strong ally in that region is a counter weight to the growing Russia/China alliance.

More Republicans for states' rights
 

And a Democrat to make regulation a one-way ratchet.

India Nuclear Deal
 

An important step towards what?

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

One of my first projects as an associate (I started at a crim. defense boutique, doing mostly white-collar cases but some "panel" appeals) was an appeal for a child molester.

Didn't much like it.

Time to Boycott Dominos (again)?
 

Ever try getting a teller at the local Citibank branch to perform one? Boycott!!!

More Republicans for states' rights
 

Hey, let the states compete with each other. If people in Nebraska don't want to pay the costs of having more food regulation, good for them. If people in California want to be more careful about heavy metals in their fish, OK. But let's have a federal baseline so that when I travel to Nebraska, I don't need to worry about whether they've completely surrendered to the greater profits of ConAgra, Hormel, etc.

India Nuclear Deal
 

Ties with India are a good thing. And I'm not saying the NNPT was perfect. But this was a lost chance to improve ties with India while fixing the NNPT. It's will unnecessarily piss off our allies in the anti-proliferation effort, and tells countries like Iran and North Korea that they should develop nukes outside the NNPT and just wait for everyone to accept it. Isn't this a big step backward if you're trying to convince Iran to comply with international standards? "India is our friend, so they don't have to comply, but you're not, so you do."

India Nuclear Deal
 

My personal view is that treaties are a joke because there really isn't an effective enforcement mechanism other than war. I realize that this also applies to the treaty with India, but at least when it's tied to an ecomonic and militarily strategic interest, there is some incentive for them to comply.

I will gladly give you my left lung on Thursday for a hamburger today.
 

Given that the annualized interest rate runs into the hundreds of percents, even taking into account administrative and collection charges, these outfits would have to have a failure rate of about 75% before they started seeing their earnings creep down toward the level of "regular" finance companies. It's as predatory as the old-fashioned street loan-sharking. The big difference is that these guys paid off enough legislators to legalize it and they may be less likely to break thumbs.