rivlin - broke, usa; from pawnshops to poverty, inc.; how the working poor became big business (2010)

[...]... live in the realm of theory, he said, his customers live in the real world, where a quick cash advance can mean the difference between the kids going to bed fed or hungry “They try and stop check-cashing operations,” Jones said of the consumer advocates he’s battled over the past few years “They try and stop the tax refund business They try and stop the rent -to- own industry They try and stop the auto title... disorder The CEO of one of the industry’s biggest chains, ACE Cash Express, even brought a video created for the occasion aimed at bucking everyone’s spirits A montage of warm black-and-white photographs flashed on a screen hovering above the stage as an ethereal cover of the song “Over the Rainbow” played and a narrator intoned, “They need to pay their rent They need to feed their family They need... couple of the poverty industry’s more lucrative areas Other giant retailers were starting to nibble around the edges of their market as well Yet all these seemed minor concerns compared to changes in the political climate From the podium, in the corridors, in breakout sessions, and in the bars you could hear the fear and also the rage They were blameless for the current financial meltdown, they told themselves,... more slowly, one store at a time He focused on mom-and-pop pawnshops run by aging couples whose children wanted the cash more than the headaches of running the family business Daugherty was up to thirty-five stores when he convinced an investment bank to take his company public In 1987, Cash America began trading shares on the American Stock Exchange The AMEX lacked the cache of the Big Board or Nasdaq... ante—in 2009 the average pawn loan stood at just $90—Cash America now tops more than $1 billion in revenues and churns out in excess of $100 million in profits a year Other businesses that belonged to what might be called the fringe financial sector followed more or less the same trajectory as the pawnbrokers The rent -to- own furniture and appliance business was born in the late 1960s when the owner of... walked away from their house and mortgage and moved into a trailer park in a suburb south of Dayton The place wasn’t too bad, they said Space was tight but they had access to a community swimming pool There were trees, the grounds were well maintained, the neighbors were nice All in all, it didn’t seem too terrible a place to recover while waiting for the courts to rule on their claim The Myerses wouldn’t... if they didn’t buy the idea that they were partially responsible for the nation’s financial woes, they recognized that others would blame them The country’s biggest banks and Wall Street’s best-known financial houses had belly-flopped into the subprime soup and the members of FiSCA knew they were in danger of being swamped by the wash “You better hurry on down to Cleveland [Tennessee] if you want to. .. later to talk about the same issue, though this time the invitation came from the House In April 2000, when Andrew Cuomo, then the HUD secretary, was holding hearings to investigate subprime lending, Atlanta was the first stop on his five-city tour and Brennan was one of the featured speakers “Finally, it’s our day in the sun,” he told a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution It wasn’t to be... proceed to make the other laugh “Ale-ann Ale-ann, I shore do i-pree-shy-ate y’all comin’ on up he-ya.” Jones had always admired James Eaton He was a “real stately” fellow, he said, a bespectacled man who smoked a pipe “He looked to me kind of like Sherlock Holmes,” Jones said That made it all the sadder when they found Eaton working in a shack so shabby the paint was peeling off the walls It was the office... hearing complaints from the debtors that they were too gung-ho After an hour or so of watching Eaton deal with his customers, he was struck by how friendly it all was “People would thank him,” Jones recalled “They would thank him and thank him and thank him.” The other thing that stuck in his mind was that these were working folk, not poor people They drove decent cars They dressed in good clothes Jones wondered . alt="" Broke, USA From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business Gary Rivlin To DAISY and OLIVER And in honor of two extraordinary people who passed away during the writing. enough to remain affordable. Business was good for both Mackey and his credit-starved customers. The working people who borrowed money from Mackey the working poor, if we were talking about them today—proved. a narrator intoned, “They need to pay their rent. They need to feed their family. They need someone who understands them.” Joseph Coleman, the group’s chairman, had offered similar self-affirmations