Usury Lending Limits PDF Download

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banking law
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Author: Udo Reifner
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3848217643
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banking law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Franklin Winton Ryan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Interest
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Author: Christopher Lewis Peterson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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In the Western intellectual tradition usury law has historically been the foremost bulwark shielding consumers from harsh credit practices. Historically, the United States commitment to usury law has been deep and consistent. However, the recent rapid growth of the payday loan industry belies this longstanding American tradition. In order to understand the evolution of American usury law, this paper presents a systemic empirical analysis of all fifty state usury laws in two time periods: 1965 and the present. The highest permissible price of a typical payday loan authorized under each state's usury law was calculated. These prices were then translated into Annual Percentage Rate (APR) format following the federal Truth-in-Lending Act price disclosure regulations. Moreover, this Article also compares how each state legislature describes its most expensive permissible payday loan, with how that loan is characterized under federal price disclosure law. It does so by suggesting a new financial concept which I label: salience distortion. This analysis produces three findings: (1) usury law has become more lax; (2) usury law has become more polarized; and, (3) usury law has become more misleading. These findings suggest that the numeric language in current state usury statutes is not chosen because it helpfully describes some expectation of commercial behavior. Rather, legislatures have chosen the language of most current credit price caps because it sounds in an ancient moral tradition - a mythology of sorts - that roughly delineates popular perception of moral and immoral interest rates. Exploiting this normative tradition as well as common behavioral economic heuristics, many state legislatures use small, innocuous numbers in usury law because they are attempting to minimize the public and media outcry over their decision to legalize triple digit interest rate consumer loans.

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banking law
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description

Author: Charles R. Geisst
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812207505
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The practice of charging interest on loans has been controversial since it was first mentioned in early recorded history. Lending is a powerful economic tool, vital to the development of society but it can also lead to disaster if left unregulated. Prohibitions against excessive interest, or usury, have been found in almost all societies since antiquity. Whether loans were made in kind or in cash, creditors often were accused of beggar-thy-neighbor exploitation when their lending terms put borrowers at risk of ruin. While the concept of usury reflects transcendent notions of fairness, its definition has varied over time and place: Roman law distinguished between simple and compound interest, the medieval church banned interest altogether, and even Adam Smith favored a ceiling on interest. But in spite of these limits, the advantages and temptations of lending prompted financial innovations from margin investing and adjustable-rate mortgages to credit cards and microlending. In Beggar Thy Neighbor, financial historian Charles R. Geisst tracks the changing perceptions of usury and debt from the time of Cicero to the most recent financial crises. This comprehensive economic history looks at humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit. Beggar Thy Neighbor examines the major debt revolutions of the past, demonstrating that extensive leverage and debt were behind most financial market crashes from the Renaissance to the present day. Geisst argues that usury prohibitions, as part of the natural law tradition in Western and Islamic societies, continue to play a key role in banking regulation despite modern advances in finance. From the Roman Empire to the recent Dodd-Frank financial reforms, usury ceilings still occupy a central place in notions of free markets and economic justice.

Author: Howard Bodenhorn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 47

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Few pieces of economic regulation are ubiquitous as usury limits. Similarly, few economic principles are as widely accepted as the belief that interference with freely contracted prices leads to market distortions, and many studies of financial markets find that usury limits negatively affect credit availability. This study shows that when no regulatory authority monitors and stands ready to punish violators of the usury limit when intermediaries and borrowers form long-term relationships, banks and borrowers regularly contract for interest rates in excess of the usury ceiling. Time series analysis reveals limited effects on credit availability when market rates exceed the usury ceiling. Cross-sectional analysis of individual loan contracts also shows that the positive effect of a long-term relationship offsets the negative effect of the usury limit on credit availability.

Author: Peter Temin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This paper studies the effects of interest rate restrictions on loan allocation. In 1714, the British government tightened the usury laws, reducing the maximum permissible interest rate from 6 to 5 percent. A sample of individual loan transactions from a goldsmith bank allows us to examine how interest rate restrictions affected loan allocation. Average loan size and minimum loan size increased strongly. Access to credit for those of noble origin improved, while it worsened for those with less "social capital." Collateralized credits, which had accounted for a declining share of total lending, returned to their former role of prominence. While we have no direct evidence that loans were misallocated, the discontinuity in loan receipts makes this likely. Our results suggest that the usury laws distorted credit markets significantly. We find no evidence that they offered a form of Pareto-improving social insurance.

Author: Edward L. Glaeser
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Interest
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
Interest rate restrictions are among the most pervasive forms of economic regulations. This paper explains that these restrictions can be explained as a means of primitive social insurance. Interest rate limits are Pareto improving because agents borrow when they have temporary negative income shocks -- interest rate restrictions transfer wealth to agents who have received those negative shocks and whose marginal utility of income is high. We assume that these shocks are not otherwise insurable because of problems related to asymmetric information or the difficulties inherent in writing complex contracts. The model predicts that interest rate restriction will be tighter when income inequality is high (and impermanent) and when growth rates are low. Data from U.S. states' regulations supports a connection between inequality and usury laws. The history of usury laws suggests that this social insurance mechanism is one reason why usury laws persist, but it also suggests that usury laws have had different functions across time (eg. rent-seeking, limiting agency problems within the church, limiting overcommitment of debts, and attacking commerce generally).