There’s a great op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader about the proposed interest rate cap on payday loans. If you want to read the entire history of interest rate regulation going back to Plato, the FDIC has a paper for you. But the News-Leader op-ed does a good job in a few hundred words of explaining why rate caps are harmful. Here’s an excerpt:
Banning the industry would deny Missouri consumers the right to make their own choices, limit their credit options and force many to risky and more costly options such as unregulated offshore Internet lenders and bouncing checks.
