Pay Day Loans Threatened By New Bill

Senator Durbin introduced bill S. 500: "Protecting Consumers from Unreasonable Credit Rates Act of 2009" which would cap consumer interest rates at 36 percent. Although this sounds reasonable, it would also apply to short term loans like pawnshops. Under a 36% rate cap, when someone borrows $100 and then repays the loan two weeks later, the customer will pay $1.38 in interest on the loan. That amount of money is not enough to satisfy the Pawnshop’s employee wages, storage, and paperwork costs associated with the loan.

While trying to shut down the Payday loan industry, Senator Durbin is about to destroy the 3,000 year old pawnshop business. Thousands of satisfied customers of pawnshops have signed a petition on SaveMyPawnshop.com to tell Senator Durbin: ‘Thanks for lowering my interest rate, but you will put the pawn shop out of business”.

Pawnshops are seeing records amount of traffic to their stores, spurred by high unemployment and the crippling 17 month recession. However, many of these stores might be forced to close if a new senate bill is signed into law.

Millions of people rely on pawnshops to pay for unexpected hospital bills, car breakdowns, and other unforeseen expenses. If you talk to customers of a pawnshop, they will tell you that pawnbrokers are the only lenders willing to loan them money. In fact, during the great depression, the pawn shop was the only functional lender.

If pawn shops begin to close, who is going to provide these former pawnshop customers with the loans they need? The government (with yet another bailout)? A bank? In these tough times, banks are reluctant to loan money to consumers with good credit.

SaveMyPawnshop.com is asking Senator Durbin to reconsider this bill or at least talk to customers before shutting down pawn shops.

Contact: Frank Conroe
SaveMyPawnShop.com
E-Mail: media@savemypawnshop.com