ANNISTON STAR UNLOADS ON PAYDAY LOANS!

A Report On Our Visit To The Star

(click to read the entire series)

July 1, 2008

We have reported for the last week on the series in the Anniston Star that we first notified you about on Monday, June 23rd.  This was an unprecedented hit piece against our industry!  Yesterday Charles Hunter, Robin Oliver and I visited with the editors.  This is our report on that visit.

First, the three editors were cordial.  We spent well over an hour discussing the issues.  Clearly, there was nothing different in our discussions with them that deviated from their positions in the series.  We have had editorial board meetings with others and we can tell you this was quite different.  This paper and these people appear totally, one-hundred percent dedicated to their cause of representing "the least of these" to which they so often refer to in the series.  Although we had in-depth discussions about many of the facts we know to be true about our industry, it did not seem to have much impact on them.

Here are a few additional comments and observations:

• The Center For Responsible Lending (CRL) is definitely engaged! There is no surprise here.  The editors seemed quite awed by the CRL and offended that we would present them as a competitor based on all the good they have done.  They assured us that certainly a CRL would not attract talent like a former national writer from the Washington Post if they were not who they presented themselves to be.  We were aware of the CRL presence going into the meeting, but not to the extent we observed.  The editors were well prepared with arguments against many of the facts we presented against the CRL.  Facts such as the Federal Reserve Study were no surprise to them and they were ready with a response.  What does this mean?  It means CRL will use the tactics here they have used in other states so successfully (click here).

• The Southern States (in particular Alabama and Mississippi ) Have A History Of Not Standing Up For The Less Fortunate.  The editors have a strongly held belief that the deep south is where payday lending is now concentrated, since many other states have banned the practice (with the CRL's help).  In fact, they seemed totally blind to the fact that payday lending was quite prolific in many western states, except Utah.  They used Utah as an example because, according to the Star,  they are a "religious enclave" and the CRL has reported high concentrations of payday lending in areas that have a high density of "believers."  Read this previous Borrow Smart report that includes a discussion about Utah.  All of this comes straight from the CRL playbook.  It causes us to believe Alabama may not be the exclusive target of CRL's next actions.  It seems quite obvious Utah and some southern states are on their radar screen.

• They Are Counting Industry Losses.  They were well aware of the many states that have stopped the "abusive payday loan practices."  They used this as one of the justification points for stopping it in Alabama.

We discussed many other issues.  It is obvious these people are fully committed to their cause and they have a powerful friend in the CRL to help.  If you have heard us speak of the core causes of specifically why our industry is a target of such relentless adversaries, then you have heard discussions about "egalitarian movements" society has seen over time and throughout history.  If you understand history, these movements do not go away without a final conclusion and their supporters have no higher calling than their particular cause.  That is clearly where these editors stand!  They actually made quite an outspoken and emotional point to be sure we understood that they stand for "egalitarian and social justice" for their readers and for their community.  They told us that and they displayed that with monuments throughout the lobby of their building with just those words.

Although we don't expect yesterday's efforts to change the minds of the Star we do believe that spending time with them helped them to understand things about our industry that they didn't before. For example, we don't believe they realized that capping fees on payday lenders in other states has shut down the business completely in those states or that capping fees on military lending meant that the military could not borrow. They certainly didn't know that the WSJ article had missed the boat completely.  We did make an attempt to discuss ways we might work together to address issues they are concerned about without destroying an industry that serves people who have a need and who use our services wisely.  There may be some possibilities in the future.  We will give it further thought.

In closing, we are sure there are other papers in the state with these views.  Clearly the ones we have visited, that are among the largest in the state, were open to hear our side and agreed with many of our points, unlike the Star.  We have stated many times before, these types of stories are the root causes and often the impetus that cause elected officials to move against us just as we were told by the people who lost in Ohio.  We knew going into this meeting the Anniston community was not a supporter of our industry as evidenced by moratoriums against any new businesses and articles like the Star wrote last week.  We were not surprised by what we found in our meeting.

We must continue our effort to show that we are working to protect our customers and we must work to continue to get that message out to the public, contrary to what papers like this publish.  We have done this since we began and others have reported positively on our effort.  Actually, this same paper published a relatively fair article a few months ago (that was before CRL got to them)  In addition, we are working on new programs that demonstrate our commitment to this effort even more emphatically.  They will be announced in the very near future.  Stay tuned.

After this exercise, if you do not believe our industry is facing a powerful and formidable opponent with an incredible track record in destroying our industry, then to put it bluntly, you must live in some other universe!  If we stick our head in the sand and "do nothing" we will surely suffer the same fate as almost a dozen other states.  You can do something now by joining with us in our fight to preserve our businesses in our home state.  We have made great inroads, but we must do more.  We need more operators to stand up for what we believe if we are to have a fighting chance.  Clearly, that fact did not go unnoticed by the editors of the Star.

- Max Wood