Stop the Payday Loan Debt Trap Update – Jan. 20

PAYDAY MESSAGES TO DIRECTOR CORDRAY UNDERWAY!

Below are the first appeals in a series of messages we will be sending to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). These messages are great – coming from activists and advocates around the country and calling for strong regulation of payday, auto title and installment lenders. The CFPB is on the front lines of Payday Lending Reform and we need CFPB Director Cordray to stand with us. The voices of payday lenders, debt collectors, big banks and their allies are loud, but we can be LOUDER! These messages will be sent out several times a week.

YOU CAN HELP!

Please follow us @RealBankReform and on Facebook – Retweet/Like/Share these messages.

To keep this series up over the coming months we need you. Send us your picture, quote, video calling for a strong CFPB rule. Messages can be sent to gynnie@ourfinancialsecurity.org.

STOP THE PAYDAY DEBT TRAP IN THE NEWS

Mother Jones: This Is How Republicans Plan To Destroy Liz Warren’s Greatest Achievement
Ever since Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground in 2010, Republicans have been trying to shut it down. GOPers drafted legislation to weaken the fledgling agency, which was designed to prevent mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other financial institutions from screwing average Americans…

CNN Money: In Texas, Payday Lenders Are Getting Borrowers Arrested
Arresting people — or threatening to do so — over unpaid debts has been illegal in Texas for years now. Yet, that hasn’t stopped payday lenders from using the criminal justice system to go after more than 1,500 borrowers in the state.
Payday lenders are routinely turning to the courts seeking criminal charges when borrowers don’t have the funds to repay their loans on time, a report from Texas Appleseed found…

DEAR DIRECTOR CORDRAY

“Payday loans are legalized loan sharking. We need the strongest rules possible from the CFPB to protect consumers from these defective products.”
Jane Alderman from Ankeny, Iowa

“When Martin Luther King spoke of opening the ‘vaults of opportunity,’ he was not referring to loans that trap people into debt and financial ruin. the ‘riches of freedom and the security of justice; cannot be found in predatory lending like payday loans, which leave the most vulnerable people among us worse off than before!
Honor Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream of economic justice! Stop the spread of Payday Lending today!”
Beverly Brown Ruggia, CRA Organizer, New Jersey Citizen Action

“In his final sermon in Memphis, the night before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. described the situation in terms of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He said the reason religious folk passed by the man who had been beaten and robbed is because they asked the wrong question: ‘If I help this man, what will happen to me?’ The good man stopped to help because he asked the right question: ‘If I don’t help this man, what will happen to him?’
What will happen to people who are being robbed and beaten by Payday Loan agencies… what will people do who are doing their best to survive?
In the spirit of Dr. King and other leaders of faith who have sought to speak for the marginalized and voiceless, an Inter-Religious group of Faith Leaders across Missouri is issuing a call to transform the Jericho Roads of Missouri. These Jericho Roads of Missouri are dangerous. Unsuspecting travelers of Missouri find themselves easy prey for powerful people who intentionally take advantage of them. Can we, in good conscious pass by on the other side?”
Rev. Dr. Steve Long from Marceline, Missouri