Looking behind us
In the financial climate of the last year, rapid payday loans have become the supplement of choice for many households. Ben Stein describes the financial events as being a “terrifying ride.” He also indicated that there may have been some valuable lessons learned from it. A careful perusal of the his statements that followed would no doubt offer the teachable student some excellent advice on what areas to cut back in to protect what assets are still profitable, and on how to look into the financial future and avoid making the same mistakes of the past.
However, there are some other interesting observations. For instance, the past several months have helped many average Americans identify alternative sources of income. Sources not necessarily located around the corner in the glass-faced high-rise that houses the local bank. For many Americans trying to survive the financial crunch while having their banker meet them at the door of the lending institution shaking his head no before they could even apply, a rapid payday loan has proven to be their only savior.
Looking around us
While the business landscape is littered with the financially dead and dying, there are some signs that the markets are bracing back up. This in no way implies that our woes are over. In fact, the analysts who are finally talking once again of a stabilizing of the economy are also being careful to maintain that we have a long ways to go to be out of the woods.
They remind us that the GM crisis is far from over, that Chrysler has not yet shown any promise of recovery, and that many lending institutions are still feeling the aftershocks of the adjustable rate mortgage disaster. This is the world that the average, middle class family is trying to survive in. Although the markets may be beginning to stabilize, the American family may find the occasional rapid payday loan to continue to be their source of deliverance from the big bad wolf of debt.
Looking ahead of us
After the mistakes of the past have been studied, and the current resulting crisis has been analyzed, the future must be planned for. How will the majority of the working class today plan for tomorrow? There are things like Social Security Benefits, 401K’s, IRA’s, Retirement Pension Funds, Insurance packages, etc. All these tools are in the box of the average person planning for those difficult days of a fixed income.
The individuals must ask themselves questions like, “am I putting away enough of my income so that I can profitably buy into some type of a retirement program?” or, and this is a more important question to ask one’s self at the outset-“How much can I afford to lay aside for retirement?”
The answers to these questions and perhaps others will once again turn the eyes of the asker toward a rapid payday loan. It may prove to be the only way to jump start the retirement savings plan while keeping the money available to handle other bills and necessities.
I think one of the lessons we could possibly glean from payday loans, per se, and this recession is that market forces really do work – in a sense. What I mean is that the payday lending industry was born in the late 80s/early 90s, and has grown from there. The reason why they have is that people need an alternative solution, and the banking/credit card industry, purportedly too big to fail, has found a competitor of sorts in the payday loan business. Then, the banks and credit card companies were dealt a crippling blow in the recession because they have become institutions, in that they are seen as somehow right and good whereas payday lenders are somehow seedy and evil. Considering that credit cards, mortgages, and also the medical industry, being the institutions they are, consistently are the biggest reasons for filing bankruptcy. Obviously, the largest financial firms (Wall Street, etc) are given status (thanks, Congress – who all got campaign contributions, it might be mentioned) as having monopoly on short term credit, and then – the supreme comedy – they were all given TAX dollars to keep afloat, when it’s obvious that most of these meganational firms have become overgrown and decadent. The customers that these companies were built on drove into bankruptcy, they foreclosed on, that paid to keep their doors open, offices stocked with ivory back scratchers, executive and administrative staff kept on payroll while the lower tiers (the ones that keeps the engine room running) are discarded freely. The payday loan industry, meanwhile, is reviled – what we should learn is how to ask just who is benefiting from a lot of the actions on the part of the Fed and the Treasury, that we the people are paying for.