Last week I covered the horror of America’s usury law problem and how it has caused a massive imbalance of where our money should be. It has shifted dramatically to the financial sector, where it is used to produce nothing. The worst of the worst of the financial sector are the payday lenders. They are scum of the earth and should be shut down immediately. They prey upon the weak and cause endless suffering. Other than that, they are great guys.

Payday lending works like this: Some poor sap has a job and a bank account and she can’t cover his bills for the month. She’s just a bit behind on the rent or her gas bill and she needs an advance on her paycheck. She’s got a new baby, after all, and she can’t afford to have the gas shut off or to be tossed out of her apartment. So, she goes to the payday lender.

Once there, she opens a line of credit. The lender agrees to give her an advance on her next paycheck and she in turn writes a check from her bank account for that amount, to the payday lender. It’s post dated and the lender agrees not to cash the check until lady’s payday. Oh, and there’s a massive fee, typically around $17 for every $100. For one payday loan, that’s not much. But it never ends there. Oh, and they don’t have to pay that fee until their next paycheck. That, of course, causes a problem on the day they get their next paycheck. It’s literally built as a trap.

The woman who needed an advance on her paycheck and paid a fee to get it, will now need another advance. Why? Well she was already behind and now she’s more behind because of the fee. She can’t afford to pay that fee, so now she needs another payday loan and she rolls it over. Welcome to the toilet, madam, you’re slowly being flushed.

These people become sharecroppers on their own life, giving the lender a never-ending share of their future earnings. Seventy-five percent of borrowers roll their loans over to the next week. The average borrower will pay $500 in fees for a $300 loan. Annual interest rates for payday loans average over 400 %. Consider the fees charged by one payday lender in DC as reported by The Washington Post:

Today America is chock full of payday lenders. It’s one of the fastest growing businesses in the USA. It’s a $40 billion industry. There are now over 22,000 payday lenders serving over 10 million Americans. Of course, those 10 million Americans are the working poor, the ones who can least afford a 806% interest loan. Many of them feel they have no choice but to take out a loan. That’s why all the payday lenders are in the worst part of town. They are predators, seeking out the weak. Last week the Huffington Post revealed that armies of "paid bloggers" had been deployed to promote payday loans:

Yeah....getting financially raped is very poetic.

Once in the cycle of doom, borrowers are screwed. Payday lenders worsen their impoverished lives and create more desperation. It’s a quick fix that leads to future horror, but the poor just want to get through that week, they aren’t thinking about two months from now, they just don’t want to lose their car today. After all, the Wal-mart where they work is way outside of town.

Thankfully, Congress is doing what they can to help the poor payday lenders.

Go Congress! Maybe we can bring back sharecropping again!

At this time, with our distribution of wealth completely out of whack, when our usury laws need to be changed to give the poor a chance and bring stability back to our country and resurrect our manufacturing base, the response of our lawmakers is to make it easier for payday lenders, by capping their interest rates at a meager 391%.

As I said last week, we are doomed.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper