Savings Account & MMA Rates
CD (Certificate of Deposit) RatesPawn shops. Payday loan stores. Check cashing services. Tax preparers hawking refund anticipation loans.
In Broke, USA, author Gary Rivlin gets cozy with 
giants of what he calls Poverty, Inc. — the multi-billion dollar industry of making money off the poor.
It’s shocking how open these guys are in discussing their work him.
He must have been a sympathetic listener who seemed to accept that the creators of this financial underworld actually has its customers’ best interests at heart — despite the backbreaking fees and triple digit interest rates.
But that’s certainly not how these morally-challenged manipulators are portrayed in Rivlin’s book.
They come off looking like vultures, scavenging every dollar they can from desperate working class families who have nowhere else to turn.
It’s a fascinating and frightening book that shows how hard it is to get ahead when you must depend on the most costly, most predatory part of our financial system.
If you’re like me, you’ve never stepped into a payday loan store, or rushed to Jackson Hewitt or H&R Block to get your tax refund.
It was hard to imagine how anyone could fall for such scams.
Now I get it. Rivlin has shown me the terrible genius behind the entire predatory system.
I’m sure many of the loan brokers, check cashers and bill collectors who spoke with Rivlin regret being so candid. But I’m glad they were.
I appreciate what they do — and why they must be stopped.
Broke, USA was published before Congress passed the financial reform bill that created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, which will have the power to regulate bad actors like payday lenders.
I can only hope it works.
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