Papers across the state are urging their readers to VOTE NO!  Here is today’s editorial from the Eastern Arizona Courier:

Considering the proposition more of a trap than a reform, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard is urging a “no” vote on Prop. 200.

“It’s a trap we need to make sure Arizona consumers don’t continue to get caught in,” he said in a recent talk show interview on KFYI-AM in Phoenix.

The proposition sounds as if its main purpose is to reform a payday loan act, which is scheduled to expire in 2010, but it actually protects the predatory lending business, which is snaring desperate borrowers and charging interest rates up to 391 percent.

The reform is that the business will no longer be able to charge up to 460 percent in interest, limiting it instead to under 400 percent.

While it is true that people sometimes need quick loans, they can get caught in cycles of taking out payday loans to pay off a previous payday loan. That is the basis of this country’s economic crisis, borrowing on tomorrow and, as a result, falling further and further behind.

Other lending institutes in the state cannot charge interest rates higher than 36 percent, according to the Arizona Credit Union League and Affiliates Web site.

Vote “no” on this proposition to protect individual and state economies.