By Aaron Weaver
“Payday loans are the Lay’s potato chips of finance; you can’t have just one and they’re terrible for you.”
Comedian John Oliver dropped that line during a segment on his new show Last Week Tonight back in August. The HBO satirist delivered a humor-filled takedown of the $46 billion dollar industry that traps consumers in what Oliver called a “circle of misery.”
In Missouri, faith-based advocates have been working to end this circle of misery. Regulating an industry of this magnitude is no easy task and sometimes, as Missourians learned last year, “regulation” isn’t always real.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed legislation in July to reform the payday lending industry in the Show Me State — legislation that consumer advocates had dubbed as “phony,” pointing out that the payday industry didn’t even bother to oppose the bill.…
