| Well now she has done it. Senator Granny has gone and secured a seat on the Senate Banking Committee. This, of course, is exactly what all liberals wanted when they elected her, because banks are bad and full of awful people. Except for the 73% that are women, I guess!?!? And Granny has promised to beat the holy living crap out of all of them!
No doubt, Senator Granny will come down hard on all those miserable banks and their brethren lending institutions that do nothing positive for America. Except for question of what to do about one troubling little group - the pesky Tribal PayDay lending institutions. Senator Granny has to make a tough decision - support her native people, or run these troublesome lenders into the ground.
For those of you unfamiliar with Tribal PayDay lending institutions - these are lending institutions that secure space on Tribal lands for the sole purpose of making very high interest loans. Granny Warren's group CFPB had great difficulty in regulating them because they were generally located on protected Tribal lands.
From the Center for Public Integrity Report:
State regulators and consumer lawyers say that the lender-tribe marriages are ruses designed to allow non-Native American companies to skirt consumer-lending laws. The tribes, they claim, are being used as fronts for the lenders.
An ex-employee of one tribal-affiliated lender testified the company secured post office boxes on tribal land to protect itself from attacks by consumer lawyers and government regulators. He claimed a manager told him: "They don't touch us on Indian reservations."
Affiliating with tribes is just one method some payday lenders have used to skirt existing laws and oversight.
No doubt, Granny Warren will have to betray her obvious and proud family lineage if she is to get banks straightened out. And she better do it too, because the interest rates charged by these groups are unlawful.
In a typical payday loan transaction, a borrower might pay a $50 finance charge to borrow $300 that's scheduled to be paid back in two weeks, when his next payday comes around.
There has been a lot of talk lately about Tribal PayDay lenders. In this CNBC report the fact that interest rates of 700% are charged.
And according to this Bloomberg report both the CFPB and the FTC are ready to crack heads over the abuse by lending institutions on Tribal lands.
A fundamental issue is at hand here - do people on Tribal lands retain the right to charge unregulated interest rates on loans? Tribal lands are sovereign lands and therefore have some limited immunity from federal regulation. If lenders on Tribal lands want to charge 100% or 700% interest on a loan that is there business, and nobody else's. One person elected to oversee this process on the Senate Banking Committee is Granny Warren, who is herself a Cherokee and Delaware Indian. Can she do this without conflict of interest? If she allows it to happen then she is betraying the American consumer. If she stomps on those poor Tribal people she will betray her very forefathers and the deny the suffering they endured as Native Americans in a world full of hate.....etc,etc,etc...
Maybe Obama believed it was a conflict of interest for Granny Warren to Chair the CFPB in its efforts to crush the Tribal lending groups? I know it will be a difficult choice for Granny - if she does her job and crushes these Tribal PayDay groups she will be leading many of her 'own' people to slaughter. Countless Indians make a living at these lending institutions.
I guess we have to wait and see how it plays out. Somehow I have a feeling she will betray the Tribes....
To learn more on this subject about troubling and often illegal Tribal PayDay lending institutions read here: |
