“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in "

[Gob]

The Archbishop of Canterbury is understood to be "furious" after the Church of England confirmed it invests indirectly in online lender Wonga.

It comes after the Most Reverend Justin Welby told Wonga boss Errol Damelin the Church would try to force the firm out of business by boosting credit unions.

But the Church later said it invested in funds that provide money for Wonga.

Lambeth Palace said an independent inquiry would be launched in to how "this serious inconsistency" occurred.

The amount of Church money indirectly invested in Wonga was less than £100,000 out of investments totalling £5.2bn.

Payday firms offer short-term loans, often at high interest rates, and have been accused of leading people into more debt.

Archbishop Welby had said his plan was to create "credit unions that are... engaged in their communities".

And Wonga's Mr Damelin had said he was "all for better consumer choice".

[Lord Jim]

For those, (like myself) who had absolutely no idea what "Wonga" is, (it sounds sort of like a made up African country from a Mission: IMPOSSIBLE episode) it is a payday loan company....

ETA:

Actually I guess the article kinda says that...

[Gob]

Wonga

How much can you borrow? Anything from £1 to £400 if you're a new customer; up to £1,000 if you are an existing customer.

How much does it cost? There's a £5.50 "transmission fee", then interest is 1% a day. The quoted APR is a phenomenal 5,853%


Wonga used to give the example of a£207 loan over 20 days, with interest and charges of £47.42 and an APR of 4,214 per cent.

But it now uses a new example of someone borrowing a smaller sum of £150 for 18 days, with interest and charges of £33.49 and an APR of 5,853 per cent.

[Scooter]

They are trying to get a foothold here as well, but they may not make it before the provincial government cuts the legs out from underneath the entire industry. There have been legislative proposals to make all of the fees charged considered to be interest, which would of course make these loans usurious under the law. Unfortunately they feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, because of the effect that shutting these loan sharks down will have on the poor slobs that rely on them to make it from pay cheque to pay cheque.

[dales]

That reminds me, I have to pick up my old man's watch from the pawn shop. Their interest rates are high but nothing like Wonga!

[Lord Jim]

Lambeth Palace said an independent inquiry would be launched in to how "this serious inconsistency" occurred.

The amount of Church money indirectly invested in Wonga was less than £100,000 out of investments totalling £5.2bn.

Well, at less than 100k out 5.2 billion, I don't know how "serious" I'd call it...

I suppose it's embarrassing, but it looks to me like a case of somebody pretty low down the totem pole involved in The Church's portfolio investment management not going through the portfolios of some of the fund groups they were invested in with a fine tooth comb....

[dales]

...three days.

He was of course speaking of His crucifixion and resurrection.

[Scooter]

He was Those who put those words into his mouth decades later were of course speaking of His crucifixion and purported resurrection.

Fixed that for you.

[dales]

No, you only fixed it for yourself.

[dgs49]

Oh, the elitism of the "middle class."

Payday loan companies provide a necessary service that may not be available to those who need it if such lenders were - as 'right minded' people desire - eliminated. If you need immediate cash for an urgent situation, and can't get that money anywhere else...

You should go fuck yourself?

What do you suppose is the default rate on "payday" loans? On typical consumer loans to creditworthy customers it is a couple percent. Payday loans? 20% More? May they charge a rate that reflects the credit risk? The inordinately high administrative cost (compared to the loan principle) of processing a loan of a couple hundred bucks? Or should they lend money at the same rate as a bank would charge a creditworthy customer in a secured loan?

And what is your recourse as a lender when the borrower has no assets that can be attached?

Clearly, a much bigger societal crime is selling drinking water in plastic bottles for several times the cost of petrol. When the water in the bottles is no better than what comes out of your tap. Where are the demonstrations against Perrier? Where is the outrage?

[dales]

Which bring to mind the infamous quote......

“I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it.”

― W.C. Fields

[MajGenl.Meade]

It's usury, dgs. Usury. I think you'll find it's a bit frowned upon Biblically. Not exactly "middle class" condemndation, I'd say.

[Gob]

Payday lender Wonga.com has stepped up its increasingly fractious trade war with the Church of England by announcing a religion.

As the Church said it was moving into the payday lending business, Wonga said a move into religion was the logical next step for their business.

Wonga Chief Executive Errol Damelin said, ”We’re both targeting vulnerable people who really should know better – so there’s a lot of synergy here.”

“The Wonga religion won’t make ridiculous claims about returns you’ll never see, like eternal afterlife. Where’s the fine print on that one, eh Justin?”

“We can offer men in strange outfits, happy clappy songs and uncomfortable seating – no problem.”

Claims that the Wonga religion would be full of logical holes, and be easily dismissed by anyone capable of original thought have been strenuously denied.

Damelin went on, “We haven’t got all of the details sorted out but we may be working with Wetherspoons, what with them having plenty of cheap bread and wine.”

“Clearly we don’t have a coherent moral and spiritual code but frankly neither does most of the clergy and at least we can offer gay marriage.”

Asked if he wanted to take on the Catholic Church he said, “The COE is one thing but when it comes to an ingrained history of child abuse, misplaced guilt, irrational superstition and celibacy we will leave it to the experts.”

http://newsthump.com/2013/07/25/wonga-c ... -religion/

[MajGenl.Meade]

He should change his name to Robbing Dick and become an ever more popular hero skulking the undergrowth of a forest somewhere. Talk about Wanker.com

[dales]

[Big RR]

Payday loan companies provide a necessary service that may not be available to those who need it if such lenders were - as 'right minded' people desire - eliminated. If you need immediate cash for an urgent situation, and can't get that money anywhere else...

You should go fuck yourself?

Loan sharks provide similar services for those who cannot qualify for payday loans, would you similarly defend them and say that these "services" should not be eliminated (or regulated) as well? And to raise the first question, even if they should be legal, should a church profit from them?

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Rick]

Pay Day lending is supposed to be illegal in Arkansas which would make anyone involved in such activity a loan shark...

[rubato]

http://www.penguin.co.uk/UKExtract/1,,M ... M=,00.html

Extract from : Paper Promises

Ignoring Polonius

‘Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – “I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”’
- Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

Since the time one caveman borrowed another’s flint axe, mankind has been in debt. Historical records show that debt agreements precede coins by around two thousand years.

Ever since those first debts, there have been disagreements about how that debt should be paid back. The verb ‘to pay’ comes from the Latin pacare, meaning to pacify or appease. When it comes to livestock, payment could come in the form of offspring – the Sumerian word for interest, mas, means calves. The Roman word for a herd of animals, pecua, was the basis for the word pecunia for money, a word that survives in the form of ‘pecuniary interest’ today.

Loans that were secured on land could be serviced by paying the lender the ‘first fruits’ of the harvest. No doubt there were plenty of loans that were repaid without interest but simply by the return of the good in question, as modern man might borrow his neighbour’s lawnmower. But the idea of interest seems as old as loans themselves. The question was really not whether interest should be paid, but how much. Hammurabi, the ruler of Babylon around 1800 BC, set a limit of 33.3 per cent for loans of grain and 20 per cent for those of silver.

The Romans also imposed a maximum rate for loans; Julius Caesar’s assassin Brutus was rebuked for charging a rate of 48 per cent for a loan to the city of Salamis when the official ceiling was 12 per cent. Jewish custom forbade the charging of excessive interest to fellow religionists (‘Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother’, Deuteronomy 23:19), so they had to turn to Gentiles when they needed to borrow money. Jews also developed the concept of a jubilee every fifty years, at which point all debts were written off, a good moment for a celebration.

The idea that interest is in some way unnatural, or an unfair imposition, is also ancient. Aristotle argued that, since coins did not bear fruit, interest should not be paid on monetary debt. Christians adapted the concept of usury from the Old Testament, with the Council of Nicea in 325 prohibiting clerics from the practice. Usury was condemned outright, even though Deuteronomy allowed the practice of usury with ‘strangers’.

What the Church did not do is make it entirely clear what usury meant. One definition, from St Augustine, was ‘to expect to receive something more than you have given’. This statement did not mean that interest should not be paid at all, but that creditors should only be compensated for the loss incurred from lending. This could be defined as the ‘opportunity cost’: what the lender might have done with the money if it had not been lent. Profitable investment was clearly not ruled out. After all, the parable of the talents suggests that some form of interest was acceptable. The lazy servant who buried his master’s money is told that ‘You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest’ (Matthew 25:27).

The Bible is full of such contradictions. Nevertheless, the restriction on usury was real and undoubtedly the development of credit was restricted as a result. Ways were found round the injunction. The business of pawn-broking, for example, continued through the Middle Ages. Usurers were sufficiently common for Dante to condemn them to the seventh circle of hell. This dislike of moneylenders has lasted through the centuries, with particular prejudice against the Jews, as epitomized in the character of Shakespeare’s Shylock. This was monstrously unfair since in many countries Jews were not allowed to own land or enter respectable professions. Money-lending was one of their few remaining options. (Modern immigrants often face a similar catch-22; condemned either for being idle, or for taking people’s jobs, and usually both at the same time.)

Since trade depends on credit, credit was provided. The historian Charles Kindleberger concluded that, ‘The usury laws of the Church did not so much cut down the amount of lending and borrowing as complicate them by the necessity to disguise the state of affairs.’ Similarly, while Islam forbids interest payments in theory, ways are found around the injunction in practice. The underlying idea is that the lender should share in the profits with the borrower – for example, if a loan is made against a house, then a lender should share in the benefits of a rise in price.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century led to a decisive break in Christian tradition. The Protestant clerics, such as John Calvin, were noticeably more favourable to the lending of money at interest. Calvin edged back to the Roman principle of setting a maximum rate, in his case 5 per cent. Some saw the change in doctrine as explaining the economic success of the Northern European Protestant nations (England and Holland) relative to the Southern Catholic nations. The Protestant work ethic also explained the rather harsh attitude towards debtors, which saw many sent to prison. But there were at least some loopholes. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, was known as the ‘Sunday gentleman’ because he only appeared in polite society on the Sabbath, a day when debtors were traditionally immune from arrest.

[rubato]

Some more here:

http://post.nyssa.org/files/beggarthyneighbor.pdf