Check Cashing

The Debit Is in the Details

Len Hollie | Posted 11.06.2011

Len Hollie

In August, the Federal Reserve imposed a cap on the fees banks can charge retailers every time customers swipe their debit cards. Why is that important? In addition to banks, consumers may be the biggest losers.

Legalized Loan-Sharking: Is It Coming to New York?

Amy Traub | Posted 07.26.2011

Amy Traub

Payday lending has been denounced as "a scourge on vulnerable citizens" and condemned as "modern day usury." So why do some state legislators want to introduce these predatory financial products to NY?

Zach Carter

In Stealth Lobbying Move, Wall Street Coordinates With Check-Cashers, Payday Lenders To Gut CFPB

HuffingtonPost.com | Zach Carter | Posted 05.25.2011

WASHINGTON -- Wall Street banks are deploying little-known lobbying organizations who represent companies like Pizza Hut and Radio Shack in a new push...

New Consumer Agency Is Frightfully Necessary -- And Late

Elizabeth Warren | Posted 05.25.2011

Elizabeth Warren

Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation. The latest disclosures are deeply troubling.

Reporter Spends Month Living Without A Bank, Finds Sky-High Fees

Posted 05.25.2011

NEW YORK (AP, Candice Choi) -- The nickel-and-diming never stopped. The fees were constant: $28 to cash a paycheck. $1.50 for a money order. A doll...

Arthur Delaney

From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.

HuffingtonPost.com | Arthur Delaney | Posted 05.25.2011

Montana voters on Tuesday approved a ballot initiative to cap interest rates on short-term credit at 36 percent, effectively banning payday loans -- p...

An Increasingly Important Debate: Microfinance as a Non-Profit or Possible IPO?

Vivian Norris | Posted 05.25.2011

Vivian Norris

Nonprofit Microlending is based on trust. For profit lending is not. This is a huge difference, and it's possible the latter could turn into a repeat of the villager loan shark mode

Don't Worry About The Bedbugs -- Eliminate the Financial Parasites

John Harrington | Posted 05.25.2011

John Harrington

$1.6 billion of interest, excessive fees, and other exorbitant costs are being charged to poor people every single day, making it almost physically and fiscally impossible for individuals to exit the poverty cycle.

Midterm Choice: Profiteers or Bureaucrats

Tina Dupuy | Posted 05.25.2011

Tina Dupuy

When Republicans talk about freedom, they don't mean the freedom to be able to drink clean water piped into your home. When they talk about freedom, they don't mean a job that pays enough to live on.

Should We Put the Brakes on Financial Innovation?

Rohit Chopra | Posted 05.25.2011

Rohit Chopra

In recent years, most of the consumer financial innovations have been largely about getting ordinary people to borrow at pricing structures that they don't completely understand.

Does Everything Require Stimulus?

Jerry R. Welch | Posted 05.25.2011

Jerry R. Welch

Rather than treat the unbanked and underbanked as second class citizens, the prepaid card industry is listening to their needs.

Regulate Nonbank Financial Institutions, Say Consumer Groups

Posted 05.25.2011

WASHINGTON -- While much of the Congressional debate over consumer financial protection has focused on banks, lawmakers have been grappling behind the...

Mackonomics: 1 Recession = Millions of Financial Leeches to Suck You Dry!

Ryan Mack | Posted 05.25.2011

Ryan Mack

With an economy that is in a recession that feels like a depression in many cities across the country ... the sharks (financial predators) are in the water.

"Unbanked" Citizens Increasingly Targeted By Big Companies And Payday Lenders

washingtonpost.com | Ylan Q. Mui | Posted 05.25.2011

For years, the country's makeshift network of payday lenders and check cashers has operated with little competition or federal regulation. ...

Large Banks Market Payday Loans To Their Customers

startribune.com | CHRIS SERRES, Star Tribune | Posted 05.25.2011

A few of the nation's largest banks -- including Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco, and Fifth Third Bancorp of Cincin...

Poverty in America: The Problems and Solutions

Vivian Norris | Posted 05.25.2011

Vivian Norris

We need to make communities strong again. Our local money does not need to be mixed in with some guy's hedge fund abstract tranche of nothing all to make a fee for some banker in New York.