CHAPTER 11

THE GROUND ASSAULT

So, now that Dodd-Frank has birthed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and American consumers are safe from their own financial decisions, has the Center for Responsible Lending closed up camp? Hardly. With the Consumer Bureau now providing air cover and artillery, the infantry—that is, the Center and its scores of affiliated groups—has moved into a new phase of their work. Their basic approach is quite simple: in states with friendly legislators, they lobby for rules and regulations that will hinder, if not prohibit, whatever lending they don’t like—which means all small-dollar loans. To do so, they employ a proverbial silver bullet: a cap on the annual percentage rate (APR), typically 36 percent. This may ...

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