Pawnshops to Poverty

Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty Inc. - Businessweek:

'via Blog this'Check Into Cash more than doubled its revenues 1998, with profit margins well above 20 percent. That's about when Wall Street dropped any qualms it might have had about payday lending.

Jones loved hosting the investment bankers who began visiting him. He would greet them in an off-the-rack suit he bought at a discount place in town, then usher them into his "conference room"—10 metal chairs around a banged-up, folding banquet table. Nobody minded. "Them numbers are all they ever noticed," he says.