BuckeyeBlog

Perhaps looking to focus attention away from his impending impeachment, Attorney General Marc Dann hopped on the anti-payday lending bandwagon yesterday with this report. In it, he decries the “well-documented abuses” of payday lenders (did his press secretary really write that phrase without thinking someone would notice the irony?).

The document Dann put out is merely a collection of anecdotes from dissatisfied payday loan customers and representatives from interest groups opposed to the industry. Dann claims that these stories prove that payday lenders seek to trap people in debt, that borrowers don’t like these loans, and prove a variety of other “abuses.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realize that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.” A collection of stories proves absolutely nothing about the payday lending industry as a whole or its customers.

In an attempt to actually introduce facts to this debate, the Buckeye Institute has twice brought an economist to address the legislature on this issue. You can find his testimony — based on data, not anecdotes — here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Regulation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.