posted 02-21-2008 11:52 AM            

I wonder how evangelical Christians will react to being lumped with Mormons in a "Christian power index?"

From a stricty socio-economic point of view, lumping the two together doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. You must forgive me for suspecting that this particular lumping was chosen because it has the advantage of supporting the desired conclusion.

And there's this:

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Topping the list for payday activity were Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama. It's important to note that two neighboring Bible Belt states, North Carolina and Georgia, are among the nation's 11 states to ban this kind of lending.
"Despite these two recent exceptions, the evidence permits no doubt that living in a state with a great deal of conservative Christian legislative power actually puts moderate and lower income consumers at greater risk from usurious payday loans," the scholars write.

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Translation: "We can safely ignore evidence contradicting our conclusion, since the other evidence (e.g. that which does not contradict our conclusion) does not contradict our conclusion."

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"These findings propound a tragic and sad irony. Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple."

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posted 02-21-2008 12:34 PM            

"Usury" is somebody gets a loan at the interest rate he gets instead of the interest rate he wants.

Also, calculating the "annual" interest rate of a payday loan is extremely misleading. If Joe Blow borrows a thousand bucks for two weeks and pays $20 to do so, okay, that's an "annual" rate of 52%, but it's a short-term loan. The situation and the risks are very different from a loan that is intended to be paid back over a period of a year.

Imagine demanding that taxicabs charge the same "rate per mile" that you pay for an airline ticket. That's the kind of comparison the people griping about payday loans are making.

Yes, those places suck. Every neighborhood that has a payday loan place also has (in close proximity): A pawn shop, a chiropractor and a bail bonds place--all businesses whose target markets have similar decision-making skills.

posted 02-21-2008 01:36 PM            

That is the intersection of 13th street and Georgia Ave. in DC.

posted 02-21-2008 02:31 PM            

By the logic, if you are charged a $2 fee to withdraw $100 an ATM, and if you were to reduce that to an annualized interest rate that reflects the amount of time that the ATM's institution 'lends' you the money before being reimbursed by your bank - which is measured with an egg-timer - then the transaction has an annualized rate of interest of about 6,000,000% - now that's what I call usury!

This is entirely agenda-based - well-off middle-class people finding fault with a lending process that they cannot conceive of ever using, and therefore trying to 'protect' others from it. If people didn't think that payday loans were their best option in their particular circumstances - you'd never see these businesses anywhere. "Regulate" these business and you deny a certain part of the population access to a certain form of credit that seems to be very popular. It's the same as the loons who cappaign for 'fair trade' and the closing of 'sweatshops' in faraway lands, who have appointed themselves to be in charge of deciding what's best for other people.

llater,

llamas

------------------
. . . a truly bad and evil man. So bad and evil that he's banned by Kim du Toit.

"All things are ready, if our minds be so."
King Henry V, Act 4, scene 3

posted 02-21-2008 02:42 PM            

quote:

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Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple.

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posted 02-21-2008 02:47 PM            

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Originally posted by KGB:
The more I look at that, the more it sounds subtly anti-Semitic to me. Please convince me I'm imagining things.

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I think it's quite a stretch.

posted 02-21-2008 06:43 PM            

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Originally posted by KGB:
The more I look at that, the more it sounds subtly anti-Semitic to me. Please convince me I'm imagining things.

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posted 02-21-2008 06:55 PM            

Christian power index? I thought we weer supposed to have separation of church and state?

posted 02-21-2008 07:09 PM            

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Originally posted by setnahkt:
Nope. The reference to "Hebrew temple" seems like a dead giveaway to me.

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posted 02-21-2008 09:59 PM            

My objection is that Jesus' wrath was at the money changers' use of the Temple to make money instead of to worship God. He wasn't angry at them because they were making money; he was a cabinet-maker for most of his life and presumably paid his bills. The idea that modern-day money-lenders are somehow guilty of the same offense as the money-changers in the Temple is silly.

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"Despite these two recent exceptions, the evidence permits no doubt that living in a state with a great deal of conservative Christian legislative power actually puts moderate and lower income consumers at greater risk from usurious payday loans," the scholars write.

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Definitely anti-Christian.

Yeah, "Christian legislative power" really puts people who want to borrow money "at risk" of...being able to borrow money.