If Senator John Thune thinks the alleged and disputed bias of Facebook Trending News warrants a Congressional investigation, then surely he’ll muster big government to look into Google’s very real and open bias against payday lenders. Google is banning ads for payday loans:
Google announced Wednesday that it will ban all payday loan ads from its site, bowing to concerns by advocates who say the lending practice exploits the poor and vulnerable by offering them immediate cash that must be paid back under sky-high interest rates.
…Consumers will still be able to find payday lenders from a Google search. But the ads that appear on the top and right-hand side of a search results page will not show marketing from the payday lending industry beginning on July 13 [Andrea Peterson and Jonnelle Marte, “Google to Ban Payday Loan Advertisements,” Washington Post, 2016.05.11].
Google says it is banning ads for loans with an APR greater than 36% because “research has shown that these loans can result in unaffordable payment and high default rates for users.”
The next logical question for Google is whether this ban against misleading ads for fake or harmful products will also compel them to ban ads for South Dakota’s Amendment U (for Usury!), the misleading ballot measure that proposes to write a fake and harmful amendment into South Dakota’s constitution insulating triple-digit-interest payday loans from regulation.
Google has a conscience, we will remember.
this is the ABUSE OF PROCESS going on by these same folks in courts acreoss the nation:
In 1996, there were around 500 court judgments in New Jersey from suits filed by debt buyers. By 2008, that number had reached 140,000. It’s dipped since then, but the change over time is obvious. Debt buyers dominate the docket in New Jersey’s lower level civil court: In 2011, they accounted for 48 percent of the court judgments. And from 2001 through 2011, they obtained more than 1 million court judgments in New Jersey alone.
For the most part, debt buyers purchase defaulted credit card accounts, typically for a few pennies on the dollar. Starting in the late 90’s, the industry began a period of rapid growth and then exploded in the middle of the last decade. That led to a sharp spike in suits, many of them by smaller debt buying companies that have since gone out of business.
The industry is now dominated by several large companies. The largest, Encore Capital Group, typically sues through its subsidiary, Midland Funding, LLC. In 2015, Encore collected $1.2 billion nationally from consumers, more than half of that through the courts, according to its most recent annual filing.
Data from courts all over the country show the same growth of debt buyers’ role in the courts, and in most courts, we found that debt buyers filed more suits than any other type of plaintiff.
poor people can’t afford lawyers to forward defenses.
as always, pay day lenders, and these guys’ business model is to take advantage of the unprotected, vulnerable among us, just like cigarettes, booze, drugs, gambling, and industries and whatever else takes advantage of vulnerabilities of large swaths of lower middle class populations. with no ethics, only the focus on huge returns. just another huge pool of cash to strip from the little people.
oh, to be an erin ageton of the millinneal young executives!!
don’t be duped young people, stand up for good.
https://www.propublica.org/article/so-sue-them-what-weve-learned-about-the-debt-collection-lawsuit-machine
Hildebrand/hickey-thank you. we dems support your business when in town, like last weekend.
for example, filing 70,000 suits a year law firm pressler’s collection specialist atty Gulko’s firm’s records showed that it took Gulko as little as four seconds to review a suit, and he did between 300 and 400 — sometimes as many as 1,000 — per day, then electronically signed and filed them. …sounds like micro-second electronic trading, or lenders’ forclosures without title documentation. only a defense lawyer is generally capable of putting up a victim’s defense from such predatory corporation money vacuuming schemes.
Last month, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Pressler Law Firm to pay a $1 million penalty for having filed lawsuits based on unreliable information. Pressler consented to the action, which required the firm to institute a more robust review process.
id.
So is Google going to give up all their ads on the “new generation” of sub prime mortgages being peddled by Quicken and Wells Fargo? Gotta love that sanctimony.
I have always been told that you do not ask a question like yours without knowing the answer, so what is the answer Don Coyote? Of course, you can see there is a difference between them, or maybe you may not.
Don, are those loans offered at more than 36% APR? If so, then yes, Google would ban them.
Another comment on this here: http://caveatemptorblog.com/12778/google-ban-ads-payday-lenders/ and a good blog in its own right.
Good link, Curt! As Sam Glover says, “Payday loans really aren’t good for anyone.” Shut down the ads, shut down the industry with IM 21!