postalnews blog

Lobbyist Mickey Barnett, nominated by George Bush for a seat on the USPS Board of Governors, is still actively pushing the cause of payday loan operators in his home state of New Mexico- from last Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal:

“Consumer groups rate New Mexico as one of the two worst states when it comes to regulating payday loans.

There is no limitation on interest rates charged by payday loan shops, and rates can reach 500 percent or more when calculated on an annual basis.

The industry maintains it’s misleading to use an annual interest rate calculation for a loan that is supposed to be repaid in two weeks. The industry also claims high customer satisfaction.

“Talk to the customers that come in: They love it. They get treated fairly and honestly,” said Mickey Barnett, a payday loan industry lobbyist and Albuquerque lawyer who is suing [New Mexico Attorney General Patricia] Madrid on behalf of payday lenders.

But not everybody who walks into a loan shop winds up satisfied. A Journal investigation in 2004 chronicled customers who were saddled with heavy debt, a raft of lawsuits filed by payday lenders against borrowers and a cycle of borrowing that can be difficult to break.

Consumer advocates say many borrowers can’t afford to repay loans on time and continually “roll” them over, paying repeat installments to cover the interest without making a dent in the principal.”

(Note: we try to practice what we preach, and don’t knowingly accept ads for payday loan scams- if you see one at the top of this page, email the website name to us at feedback10@postalnews.com so we can add it to our ad filter.)

(Ad update: thanks for the reports of scammers’ ads- there are still some ads popping up, but it apparently takes several hours for Google to catch up with new entries to the ad filters. Ironically enough, I had to check the spam folder to get some of your emails- even though Google sells ads to these scammers, its email service flags email containing some of these same addresses as spam!)