Starkman’s got the Center For Responsible Lending on his mind
Award-winning journalist Dean Starkman should have known better. His journalistic career has been one of distinction. He was worked for high-profile publications like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He was even part of an investigative team that won a Pulitzer Prize. But in a 2008 article for the Columbia Journalism Review entitled “Eakes!“, Starkman has written something that quickly (and conveniently) appeared on the self-defense page on the Center For Responsible Lending’s Web site. While I certainly have no evidence of payola here, it raises the question at the very least. I would hope that was not the case, however. People distrust journalists enough as it is.
Starkman presents “Eakes!” as an attack upon an article that ran a mere two days before in Forbes, “Subprime’s Mr. Clean.” The Forbes article refers to Martin Eakes, the founder of Self-Help, Inc. and president of the Center For Responsible Lending (CRL). Essentially, Starkman takes issue with the probe of what he calls a “prescient consumer advocate” in the field of subprime lending. Today, Eakes and the Center For Responsible Lending speaks out against subprime lending, but yesterday, their hands were planted firmly in the pie. Starkman is only aware of what the CRL is doing today, it seems – hurling unfair criticism at payday loans. That much is clear, because he spends almost all of his time spreading anti-payday loan propaganda instead of dealing with the smoking gun that truly puts the poor face on the CRL.
Click here and you’ll begin to see that Starkman’s deconstruction of the Forbes article is off-base…
The odd thing about the (so-called, a misnomer) Center for Responsible Lending, is that they take about the worst route to accomplishing their goal. The organization wants to combat poverty – a noble goal. Well, you can’t fight poverty by making high risk loans to people who don’t make a lot of money thereby increasing their burden of expenses, meaning that making those loans increases their level of – you guessed it – poverty! Ridiculous.