Payday loans borrowers have civil rights. They've got the right to be aware of just how much their loan would cost them. They have the right to return the amount they borrowed by the end of the day if they decide they changed their minds. They have the right to know concerning dispute resolution. The witty thing is they have the right to know so much, that nearly all payday loan places will provide you a couple pages of fine print on your rights and have you sign something at the bottom stating you waive your right to a jury trial and you do so consciously. In spite of the volumes of information payday loan places give, individuals see themselves going to payday loan stores and signing on the dotted lines anyway. It makes one wonder whether knowing is enough. How could one know and yet take decision of something that has been compared to usury? Is it ignorance, lack of interest, or something else altogether which keeps the industry in patrons at such a rate that the business seems to be thriving while other businesses are floundering?

To imply the issue raises doubts is an understatement. It's tough to have sympathy for an industry which seems to have thrived while the country is going through one of the toughest economic disaster in recent memory. The payday loan industry has positively profited, having become in fact, "$28 billion industry nationally, according to the Center for Responsible Lending" (Associated Press, 2007). As the industry grows, it leaves us wondering how human would readily reimburse 480 percent. Ray Fisman, in The Dismal Science, puts the query "Do individuals take out payday advance loans because they're desperate, or as they don't understand the rules?" What Fisman almost asks but doesn't is are individuals stupid or don't they know that one $500 loan from these establishments potentially costs them $2692 a year? These seem to be the same people who then blog queries like, "Is my payday loan place going to have me in prison? Are these businesses preying then on the stupid?

So far, nobody is forcing them to go. Or are they? It has been recommended that our current financial crisis has made it almost impossible for the average person to acquire a loan in any other way. In response to the push for more stringent borrowing practicing, traditional banks are turning away traditional borrowers. Perhaps it is not a coincidental link between the push by banks to be stricter and the responsiveness of the fringe industry to develop as a conclusion. Cash loan lenders aren't stupid. Like every aggressive child, they know there is a limit to how far you could push until you get, proverbially, smacked in the head.

President Obama has made a point of saying that America, to be economically strong, must be capable to have credit. If this is the case, we are looking at a new wave of Americans who have been forced out of the credit game, disenfranchiseed by a banking industry that was careless enough to loan to careless patrons forcing mainstream America to pick an even stupider path.