Timothy Noah Quotes

For too long, Americans have fallen victim to financial abuses at the hands of predatory lenders that operate in the shadows.

Too often, borrowers who need quick cash end up trapped in loans they can't afford.

I was absolutely astonished and could not believe my eyes at the outrageous interest rates that people in need have to pay to get loans.

I've repeatedly seen unscrupulous lenders use every con in the book to charm and lie to homeowners. Lenders actually paid brokers a premium to put people in higher-priced loans with toxic features, such as adjustable rates and prepayment penalties.

While payday loans are often the only source of credit for low-income Americans, these lenders are notorious for predatory practices that cause borrowers to fall deeper into debt.

Groups that work in black neighborhoods around the country have contended that much of subprime lending is 'predatory lending.'

Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.

Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.

Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't.

States used to protect consumers from predatory lenders, but strong state usury laws were obliterated by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives.

No other facet of American business is more corrupt, more intoxicated with illegality, more weakly regulated, and has a greater impact on poor and working people than debt collectors; not credit card companies or subprime mortgages, not even payday lenders.

We believe that you know how pernicious the vice of usury is …. We command you all by this apostolic writing not to permit those who are known as usurers to clear themselves by any subterfuge or trick when they are charged with the crime.

I have ever been the enemy of banks. My zeal against these institutions was so warm … that I was derided as a maniac by the tribe of bank mongers who filch from the public their swindling and barren gains.

There were absolutely circumstances where Sallie Mae was working hand-in-hand with for-profit schools and other schools in offering and putting students into risky expensive subprime loans.

Before the CFPB, there was no single agency or entity within the federal government tasked with protecting Americans from predatory or negligent practices of banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, payday lenders, credit rating agencies and other financial service businesses.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a sub-prime fish loan and you're in business, buddy.

We cannot continue to ask the brave men and women of our Armed Forces to put their lives on the line to protect our country while we jeopardize their safety by failing to ensure that Defense Department funds are not siphoned off to warlords in Afghanistan.

Community groups contend that door-to-door loan sales are often followed by foreclosures.

For too long, tricks and traps in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial transactions have stripped wealth from working families.

The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.

Usury once in control will wreck the nation.

Can't make your payments? No problem. The interest charges keep on coming. In fact, banks prefer it that way. More money for them. The government guarantees it.

Lawsuits against reverse mortgage companies, including the nation's largest, Financial Freedom Senior Funding, contend that those firms helped pressure older Americans into bad investments.

People get into debt head over heels because banks make it so easy to do so. Then the banks come along and act like these people who can't or won't pay their bills are the dregs of society.