First:
His plans to regulate and limit “predatory lending.” The focus of this column, also from Newsweek, is the banks two of which lent my Alzheimers ridden Mother who had no need of money, $365,000 for her home which only needed 15 years to pay off the remaining $56,000 of her original home loan.
The last two years have been ugly.
It wasn’t home loans however that got my (scotch) Irish up. It was the great financial innovations of the Bible thumping South, payday loans and title loans. It has always been a bit of a surprise to me that the once Protestant dominated GOP who once took a disapproving old testament view of “usuary” would throw themselves prostrate at these parasites. The links above explain that title loans can charge up to 300% annually for a loan while some Title Loans could charge up to 760% for a loan. When you can clear up to $7.60 on a one dollar loan to a poor person you’ll find it easy to turn some of the profits into political contributions.
Second:
Obama, like G W Bush before him, wants accountability in Public Education even at the risk of alienating one of his most important allies in the Democratic Party’s coalition, teacher’s unions. I’d like to see a major Republican stand up to some of the Party’s more repellent constituencies or cheerleaders. I’ve been waiting for that for thirty years.
