Payday Loans Keep Center For Responsible Lending at Bay

Payday loans consistently draw the ire of activist groups like the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). They tout themselves as champions on the side of the common consumer, but might the reality be very different?

Ericka Andersen of “The Confabulum” blog draws our attention to the potentially seamy underbelly of the Center for Responsible lending in her post “The Center for Shady Lending?” She calls them a “predatory lending” organization that is “unethically funded” by a big business that benefits from the policies the CRL wishes to enforce.

And you say payday loans are exploitative, CRL? Really?

Andersen reports that the Consumer Rights League points to numerous ways in which the Center for Responsible Lending “attacks competing loan products” and takes undeserved legal action against borrowers. All the while, their own top brass operate organizations that benefit by sopping up consumers they’ve managed to rip away from payday loans or who are reeling in their absence (depending upon the state).

The CRL wants to eliminate consumer choice

Throwing their collective financial might behind bans on payday loan products benefits the business interests of the CRL. But did you know that the founding of the organization goes even deeper into dark places? According to Andersen, there was Herb and Marion Sandler:

Herb and Marion created the loan instruments that allowed thousands of Americans to purchase homes they could not afford, and then sold the fruits of their labor in 2006 to Wachovia for more than $24 billion, netting a $2.4 billion payout for themselves…Some of their main initiatives [included] the CRL

Want more nails for the coffin?

Google “Center for Responsible lending corrupt” and see what you come up with. It’s a real eye-opener. The Center for Consumer Freedom puts it well:

The CRL also received a $15 million donation from billion-dollar hedge fund manager John Paulson — the man who reaped the largest windfall in Wall Street history by betting against the subprime market.

The Center for Responsible Lending is a questionable bastion for responsibility, particularly considering their origins in the subprime lending market, which has played a large role in dragging America into its current recession. They’ve done much more damage than payday loans used without proper care have ever done. It isn’t even close.