In the Least Convincing Explanation category, Sen. Bob Corker is in the News Sentinel today, saying it is a "major cheap shot" to suggest (as some have) that his apparent attempts to shield payday lenders from new federal oversight is any way tied to his long political relationship with the legalized loan-sharking industry. But, at least according to the News Sentinel, the closest Corker got to actually explaining his reported intercession was to say that Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut was the one who proposed the bill establishing a new consumer protection agency, and Corker "simply altered it." Oh. (According to The New York Times, what Corker means by altered is that he pressed Dodd "to scale back substantially the power that the consumer protection agency would have over such companies.")
Given the collapse of Corker's bipartisan talks with Dodd, it may be unlikely that those provisions will make it into the final bill, or that the bill will include a new consumer protection watchdog at all. But in any case, the whole affair has helped highlight again the particular power of the payday barons in Tennessee, which has the unfortunate distinction of having perfected the storefront predatory lending model and exported it to the rest of the nation. In case you missed it, Harper's magazine ran a long feature article last year that examined the rise of the industry over the past 20 years and Tennessee's central role in it.
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