Illegal Moneylenders

[C. Flower]

Has come up on the Joe Duffy Show and now on TV3 this evening.

People are being stripped of not only their last cent but also their personal posessions to repay loans.

Legally, in Ireland, lenders can charge up to 187% interest on loans.

Where the Credit Unions used to keep people out of the hands of these extortionate loans, the CUs are now strapped for cash themselves and pursuing people in the Courts for default on small amounts.

Illegal lenders, as well as charging extortionate interest, in some cases use physical threats and violence.

[TotalMayhem]

Dang... and we just voted YES for cash. :confused:

[Monetpenny]

I know a man that was the parish priest in Southill in Limerick for several years.
He once told me that a lot of the murder victims in Southill were illegal moneylenders.
If a moneylender was owed for example £20,000 by 10 housewives then it made much more economic sense for these 10 women to pool £3,000 & pay some wannabe gangster to shoot the moneylender.
Illegal moneylenders have a very difficult balancing act.
They need to lend enough money to make it profitable, but they can't be owed so much money that it is practical to be killed by your debtors.
Many more moneylenders just quit the business & left the area when they realised they were owed too much money.

I wonder will that happen with the IMF/ESM/ECB?

[riposte]

Where the Credit Unions used to keep people out of the hands of these extortionate loans, the CUs are now strapped for cash themselves and pursuing people in the Courts for default on small amounts.
.

That wonderful new Financial Regulator Matthew Elerfield has put lending restrictions on Credit Unions..... and this is the cause of many problems.

The Credit Unions only lend to members who have savings and that is what makes them different from banks and money lenders. We have gone from No Regulation to Over Regulation.

[morticia]

We have gone from No Regulation to Over Regulation.

You are correct; unfortunately, since none of us sees this crisis getting any better any time soon, perhaps very little lending is appropriate; in an era of perpetual contraction, more loans will go bad than not. One paradox people are not addressing is that, while lack of credit is being blamed right, left and centre as throttling economic growth, surely no-one is advocating a return to boom time standards? Hair of the dog is only a short term solution; AA would be better.

We all have to learn to live without loans, I guess. Not something the UK is doing well, either;there's a proliferation of legal payday loans companies that are charging extortionate interest and bombarding TV advertising at those silly or desperate enough to succumb. What is worse is that they are likely to have legal backing.

[DCon]

We all have to learn to live without loans, I guess. Not something the UK is doing well, either;there's a proliferation of legal payday loans companies that are charging extortionate interest and bombarding TV advertising at those silly or desperate enough to succumb. What is worse is that they are likely to have legal backing.

Surely the UK lenient bankruptcy legislation (Ivan Yates, your man from Westlife etc etc etc) makes it more likely that these loan companies are on a hiding to nothing

[Baron von Biffo]

Surely the UK lenient bankruptcy legislation (Ivan Yates, your man from Westlife etc etc etc) makes it more likely that these loan companies are on a hiding to nothing

Soft bankruptcy laws only serve crooks who don't want to pay their debts. Legalised loan-sharks who loan piddling sums at usurious rates have little to fear on that front. Their business model calls for thousands of people owing a few quid rather than a few lowlifes owing millions each.

[DCon]

Soft bankruptcy laws only serve crooks who don't want to pay their debts. Legalised loan-sharks who loan piddling sums at usurious rates have little to fear on that front. Their business model calls for thousands of people owing a few quid rather than a few lowlifes owing millions each.

true

[Kitty O'Shea]

Apparently in the UK preventing money lenders, the PPI ambulance chasers and so on would require a change in the law something that their government seems unwilling to do. But their financial regulator can and does take action against illegal moves by said companies e.g. false advertising etc.

[morticia]

true

The problem is that, while the law does not permit violence in the way that the illegals can enforce repayment, they can harass people to the point of breakdown using fairly aggressive debt collection agencies, bailiffs etc. Doesnt work well for the mentally vulnerable.