Shylock lives and is preying on the poor

you can see these places everywhere, usually cloaked in their less in-your-face guise as check-cashing parlors... they generally locate in and near immigrant and poor neighborhoods, most often in strip malls and, except for the bright neon sign in the window flashing "checks cashed" or "payday advances," look just like any other strip mall store...

Payday lending is another scheme that hits the working poor who rely on costly forms of credit. The industry has exploded in the past decade, "reporting $10 billion in sales in 2000 to $40 billion, including $6 billion in interest rates and fees, in 2003." Payday lenders offer "small-sum (between $200 and $500), high-fee ($15 to $35), short-term loans (generally two weeks) that result in annual percentage rates (APRs) that often equal or exceed 400%." Because of the high-risk terms, borrowers are often forced to pay "another high fee to roll over the loan for an additional two weeks or take out another loan to pay off the first loan, thereby getting trapped in a costly and often devastating cycle of 'back-to-back' loans." The Center for Responsible Lending reports that the average person pays $1,105 to borrow just $325 from a payday lender. The payday scheme is even a national security issue because these lenders target military service members, who are often young and financially strapped for cash. A Dec. 2004 New York Times study revealed that 25 percent of military households have used payday lenders and the Defense Department has listed predatory lending "as one of the top 10 threats to members of the military." According to the Marine Corps News, "the Navy and Marine Corps denied security clearance to about 2,000 service members nationwide in 2005 because of concern that their indebtedness could compromise key operations."

there's another, equally predatory, type of business that offers furniture and home electronics on a "rent-to-own" basis... it caters to people with no or poor credit and little available cash who would like to have a decent tv to watch (or a refrigerator or a computer or a stove or a microwave or a sofa), and can't come up with the money but can manage a monthly "rent," supposedly applied to a purchase price... by the time they've paid a few months of the exorbitant "rent" on these items, they could have bought three or four of them outright... it's scandalous...

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