News and perspective on public policy issues affecting Washington's economy and quality of life, brought to you by the Economic Opportunity Institute.
Not only is payday lending a predatory industry, new evidence shows it is hurting our state economy. A March 2013 study by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development finds the burden of repaying payday loans in 2011 led to $774 million in lost consumer spending and resulted in the loss of more than 14,000 […]
Last summer, a respected policy expert from the Brookings Institution spoke at a large meeting. He introduced himself, saying that he works with a lot of brilliant economists who can’t understand why the recovery is so slow. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has an explanation, ”…corporations use their growing monopoly power to raise prices without passing the […]
In a recent policy paper, researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis examined how much cash corporations were sitting on, and why. They found big companies are piling up record amounts of cash – essentially taking money out of circulation. So why is this a problem? Well, when corporations pile up large amounts of […]
While they haven’t been at the forefront of the predatory payday lending industry, big banks are trying to get a slice of the short-term, high-interest pie, too. Because payday lending is most often utilized by people living paycheck to paycheck, it can easily lead to a lifetime of debt for those forced to borrow at high […]
