What this and other articles on the subject don't seem to explain very well, is why this has happened.
A 1973 article from Time concluded :
"Today, outside the mortgage field, U.S. usury laws are full of holes; business loans, car loans and charge accounts are almost always exempted. As borrowers have been discovering since the federal Truth in Lending law took effect in 1969, they pay as much as 20% on loans from finance companies and even 36% annual interest on mail-order loans. So long as such rates are permitted, usury laws are useless and should be scrapped."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907860,00.h...
So guess what? People in government listened (or listened to the financial industries lobbyists...), and they did scrap the few remaining usury laws that were still effective.
25 years later we are seeing, in graphic detail, why all those usury laws weren't so useless after all.
Comments
What this and other articles on the subject don't seem to explain very well, is why this has happened.
A 1973 article from Time concluded :
"Today, outside the mortgage field, U.S. usury laws are full of holes; business loans, car loans and charge accounts are almost always exempted. As borrowers have been discovering since the federal Truth in Lending law took effect in 1969, they pay as much as 20% on loans from finance companies and even 36% annual interest on mail-order loans. So long as such rates are permitted, usury laws are useless and should be scrapped." http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907860,00.h...
So guess what? People in government listened (or listened to the financial industries lobbyists...), and they did scrap the few remaining usury laws that were still effective.
25 years later we are seeing, in graphic detail, why all those usury laws weren't so useless after all.