Numerous articles these days talk about the growing level of debt among U.S. troops. Many blame the proliferation of regular and/or no fax payday loans for this problem.

As The Motley Fool states, however, even if your job doesn’t require you to wear body armor and dodge bullets, the problems soldiers face contain some important lessons for everyone. Ask yourself:

• Is the size of your debt bothering you? If you’re spending a lot of time worrying about car payments, credit cards, or if fretting about quick payday loan bills distracts you from work, home, or hobbies, your debt load might be too high for your comfort.

• Do you live for today? Enjoying the moment is important, but not if you have to sacrifice your future. It may be time to take a second look at those debts if they prevent you from saving for retirement or meeting some other long-term financial goal.

• Do you have financial smarts? Before you take on debt, understand the terms and conditions, along with the repayment requirements on resources such as cash advance loans. Make sure the size of the debt is comfortable for you, not just for the lender.

• Do you visit the payday advance lender? Even if you don’t actually take out cash advances, you’re doing something similar if you borrow with credit cards. That high-interest loan against your next paycheck is just sitting in your wallet waiting to see some sunshine. Credit cards, used wisely, can be useful tools, but they can also run a person into deep debt quickly.

A lot of this may seem like obvious advice - but it still helps to review it. The bottom line is typically to simply remain aware; don’t sign up for any payday loans online, for instance, unless you’re familiar with all the terms and rates.

Banks and providers of payday loans are supposed to be enemies. The latter takes away business from the former by offering paycheck advances without any credit checks.

Each side, however, is displeased with the new law that caps the interest rates lenders can charge millions of military personnel and their family members. As a result, lobbyists are scurrying to press Congress to reopen the legislation next month or water it down before its effective date next year.

Their chances, though, appear slim.

“It is of grave concern,” said Floyd Stoner, executive director for congressional relations and public policy at the American Bankers Association. ” We certainly hope that as the implications are made clear to everyone, including the Department of Defense, people will recognize that in an attempt to address one issue, they could potentially harm the people it was meant to help.”

The banking and payday advance problem: More than any other law in years, this legislation has triggered a near panic for the instant cash loan and banking industry operating inside the beltway - and it’s up against tough opponents.

Senior Defense Department officials have pushed hard for the protections, while consumer groups have already lined up to defend the interest rate caps and other protections put in place.

“We were major supporters of the amendment and worked hard to help ensure its adoption, and we believe it provides important and appropriate protections,” Michael D. Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending told Nasdaq.com.

For years, the Defense Department has struggled with ways to shield servicemembers from mounting debt problems. In the last few years, the agency has held seminars for more than 300,000 servicemembers, but this summer senior officials told lawmakers that a new law was necessary to protect the military from predatory, online payday loan lending.

With that in mind, the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law by President Bush last week . The law includes a provision aimed to protect military servicemembers from the high fees charged by cash advance payday loan stores and other companies.

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Cash Now Corporation is making plenty of headlines these days. The payday loan company has been in the news for new technology, stock insights and, now, business expansions.

Chief Executive Officer Kevin Price will begin a three-week trip to Australia and South East Asia early next week, in support of the firm’s planned expansion into the Asian region.

“The focus of this trip is to assist our Australia-related operations in expanding revenues and increasing awareness of the Cash Now license brand,” said Price. “This has been our overarching goal for the company since current management came in fifteen months ago. We are focused on creating real value for the company, and growing our brand is still our primary focus.”

During his trip to Australia, Price will participate in a conference call with current Cash Now licensees in Australia to discuss the online payday advance company’s future plans and growth.

“During our time in Australia we plan to meet with representatives of the upcoming Business and Expo Show to be held on March 6th to March 8th 2007 in Tokyo, Japan, where Cash Now plans to exhibit and aggressively use that venue as an official launch platform for the Asian region,” Price said.

He added that, in anticipation of executing a definitive agreement for the recently announced ATM Enterprise business acquisition, the cash advance business also intends to gain intimate knowledge of these area’s production capabilities, bank switching and routing mechanism, and vendor and supplier relationships.

The movement is coming to Arizona. Credit unions around the nation are beginning to offer lower interest rate alternatives to payday cash advances. Soon, this state will be included among those.

Pat Gilbert, who runs the Mesa Community Action Network, an organization that provides services to the poor, has been hearing numerous clients tell him NOT to abolish bad credit payday loan services because they needed the quick cash.

Therefore, Gilbert and Robin Romano, chief executive officer of MariSol Federal Credit Union, decided to offer another way. A local MariSol branch is scheduled to open next month within the MesaCAN building at 635 East Broadway Road.

Borrowers may obtain loans there with a maximum interest rate of 18 percent, a limit set by federal law.

“The cleaner your credit, the lower the interest rate,” Romano said. “Your credit score will not determine whether you get a loan, just the rate. We’ll look at the whole package: Do you have a job? How much do you earn? How do you owe?”

Different from payday loans: Gilbert said the credit union would serve as an alternative to the payday cash loan operations that litter Mesa’s intersections.

The city is home to 111 such outlets, according to Gordon Sheffield, a Mesa zoning administrator. The number has almost doubled in two years. Many abhor the businesses, attacking them for preying on the poor, who don’t know where else to go to obtain cash quickly.

City Councilman Mike Whalen lauded Gilbert and Romano, though he said state and federal legislation still is needed to halt the ability of regular and no fax cash advance stores to exploit the ignorant.
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It would seem like a natural conclusion: The more people that apply for payday loans, the more bankruptcy rates will rise in the nation.

A study has found, however, that tightening of the U.S. bankruptcy law may actually be resulting in more bankruptcy filings. It goes on to note that an increase in unsecured debt isn’t always to blame.

Robert M. Lawless, an Illinois College of Law professor, examined the relationship between changes in federal bankruptcy law and the filing rates by consumer debtors, the school said Tuesday in a news release.

He found that the liberalization of the bankruptcy law in 1979 did not lead to a significant rise in bankruptcy filings, but the subsequent tightening of provisions in 1984 did. He did not speak specifically about payday advances, but some results imply certain conclusions.

More stringent bankruptcy laws, he wrote, can have the “perverse effect” of creating expectations of higher recovery rates from debtors by banks and other lenders, which then encourage the lenders to expand consumer credit, which can lead to more future bankruptcies.

Calling this the “paradox of consumer credit,” Lawless also noted that the widely accepted idea among experts that bankruptcy filings are directly linked to outstanding consumer debt might be misplaced. In other words: Don’t blame the faxless cash advance lender.

Instead, growth in consumer debt appears to be linked to short-term decreases in bankruptcy filing rates, followed by a rash of petitions.

“Desperate borrowing by financially strapped consumers postpones the day of reckoning,” Lawless said, but “mounting consumer debt catches up with consumers, and eventually leads to higher long-term filing rates.”

While there’s no doubt individuals should learn as much as they can about cash loans before applying - and there is a danger with these resources - it is also possible that they receive too much blame around the country.

As the Advocacy Director of the Mississippi Center for Justice, Yumeka Rushing, has a lot on her fiscal plate. The director recently found time to write in to the Meridian Star, however.

Here’s a paraphrasing of that letter:

The Department of Defense findings regarding the dangers of military payday loans should come as no surprise to Mississippians who live near the state’s numerous military bases.

Indeed, during the 2005 legislative session, state Rep. Ray Rogers (R-Rankin) recognized the problem and introduced a bill to prohibit check cashers from locating within 400 feet of any military installation. Unfortunately, that bill failed to even get out of committee, as did two others introduced by Sen. Gray Tollison (D-Lafayette) which would have begun to reign in the state’s payday cash advance lenders.
The Department of Defense report and Congress’ response begs the question:

• If our men and women in uniform need protection from predatory lenders, what about the rest of us?

Current Mississippi law allows providers of quick cash loans to collect fees equivalent to 468 percent APR, or 13 times the limit Congress found appropriate. And anyone with eyes to see knows that the 1,100 check cashers around Mississippi are targeting not only military bases but also low-income areas and communities of color.

If 37 percent APR is more than the market can fairly ask of Sgt. Jones, what’s fair for Mrs. Jones?

During the upcoming 2007 regular session, your legislators will have another opportunity to take a look at this critically important issue of cash advances. Bills introduced in both chambers will ask the state to gather information on how payday loans work for - and against - average Mississippians with an eye to the expiration of the Check Cashers Act in 2009. Another set of bills will seek to give local authorities some control over the growth of the industry in their communities.

I urge your readers to take the time to share their thoughts on the subject with their state representatives and senators before the legislative session begins in January. You can be sure that the cheap payday loan lenders will.

Cash Now Corporation is a public company engaged in the design, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of customized payday loan and check cashing software and systems.

It announced yesterday that it has requested a NOBO (Non-Objecting Beneficial Owner) report. The NOBO list shows a more complete corporate ownership profile than is available from the transfer agent alone.

The process if review is underway and the cash advance company agents are coordinating responses from banks and other institutions. The report will provide information about how many Cash Now shares are outstanding, and along with the number of holders of the company’s shares. Cash Now expects to receive the report on or about the week of November 20 2006, and will release the aggregate data as soon as possible after receiving the report.

“We are committed to remaining transparent to our shareholders - we want them to know exactly where the stock stands,” said Kevin Price, CEO of Cash Now. “As we work to shift our stock from the Pink Sheets to the Bulletin Board Exchange, this is one more step in that process.”

The provider of faxless payday loans believes an organized program to short the stock is responsible for the devaluation of the Cash Now stock that has been occurring recently. Cash Now has made several announcements over the past few months, of various corporate acquisitions and infrastructure improvements, with most of those acquisitions being made in cash and restricted stock.

The company’s management has paid great attention to the redistribution and in most instances restrictions as to how much and what manner these restrictive stocks can be sold and distributed in the future, once they become free trading.

According to the faxless payday advance firm records, there are approximately 590 million outstanding shares, on an authorized float of 950 million shares. The outstanding share structure represents both free trading and restricted shares.

With an institutional financier already in place, the company projects that it may be in a position to re acquire as much as 220 million outstanding shares (at current price levels) with this institutional financiers backing, and support over the next 6 to 12 months.

Advance America Cash Advance Centers , the nation's largest provider of short-term, unsecured loans, today awarded a $50,000 Advance America Financial Literacy Grant to United Way of the Piedmont to support financial literacy efforts in Spartanburg and Union counties.

The payday loan company has been stepping up its PR efforts recently in the face of criticism.

The Advance America Financial Literacy Grant marks the first donation from the "You Advance America Fund," established by the company to support the needs of hardworking Americans. The fund and the United Way donation were announced at a kickoff event for several hundred Advance America employees this morning at the Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium.

"The 'You Advance America Fund' is meant to demonstrate our commitment to our customers and the millions of other hard-working people whose overlooked efforts help make our cities and towns run," said Advance America CEO Ken Compton.

"While our [cash loan] products are designed to help middle-income workers overcome short-term financial challenges, we're equally dedicated to educating people about protecting their long-term financial well-being. That's why we're very excited about this initial grant, which will allow the United Way of the Piedmont to work toward improving financial literacy in Spartanburg and Union counties."

"United Way of the Piedmont is delighted to accept this grant from Advance America," said the organization's president and CEO, Kathy Dunleavy. "We will direct these funds to programs in our community that are focused on financial literacy.

One area of our United Way's Community Impact Agenda is 'Strengthening Adults and Families,' and providing access to the support necessary to build stable lives. Our hope is that our citizens will be armed with a sound knowledge of personal financial management."

Enlightening potential users about the use of a no fax payday loan is really all a company can do. From there, consumers have the decision to use this resource or not.

With election day nearing, The Arizona Daily Star has backed Attorney General Terry Goddard for a second term.

A significant reason for this support? His work to thwart cash advance lending in the state. Here's a summation of a recent editorial on the issue:

Because of Goddard's work in consumer fraud and predatory lending, his steps toward controlling the proliferation of crystal meth labs and his campaign to seize money sent to coyotes involved in human smuggling, the Star endorses Goddard for re-election.

One of the major achievements of the Attorney General's Office during Goddard's first term was the successful prosecution of two former executives of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona. Last month, former foundation President William Crotts was sentenced to eight years in prison, and former general counsel Thomas Grabinski was sentenced to six years on fraud and racketeering charges.

Goddard has also been relentless and outspoken in his attempts to regulate the pay day loan business in Arizona.

Unscrupulous payday cash advance lenders start out by offering consumers short-term loans at 400 percent interest; if that were not bad enough, multiple rollovers can easily boost that figure to 1,000 percent interest, Goddard noted in a meeting with the Star's editorial board.

Goddard's attempts to regulate the industry have been dismissed in the Legislature. State Sen. Marian McClure, R-Tucson, introduced a bill in the last session of the Legislature that prohibits companies from renewing loans to members of the military or their spouses.

The bill was so watered down that its passage gave her no satisfaction. Goddard said he hopes to work with McClure on a new and stronger payday advance bill in the next session, which opens in January.

An Associated Press review states that housands of U.S. troops are being barred from overseas duty because they are so deep in debt they are considered security risks.

While this figure is supposed to decline with a new cap on interest rates for military payday loans, the current increase is occurring at a time when the armed forces are stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We are seeing an alarming trend in degrading financial health," said Navy Capt. Mark D. Patton, commanding officer at San Diego's Naval Base Point Loma.

The Pentagon contends financial problems can distract personnel from their duties or make them vulnerable to bribery and treason. As a result, those who fall heavily into debt can be stripped of the security clearances they need to go overseas.

While the number of revoked clearances has surged since the beginning of the Iraq war, military officials say there is no evidence that service members are deliberately running up debts to stay out of harm's way. The problem is attributed to a lack of financial smarts among recruits; reckless spending among those exhilarated to make it home alive from a tour of duty; and the profusion of payday cash loan lenders - businesses that allow military personnel to borrow against their next paycheck at extremely high interest rates.

Closer look at fiscal difficulties: Data supplied to the AP by the Navy, Marines and Air Force show that the number of clearances revoked for financial reasons rose every year between 2002 and 2005, climbing ninefold from 284 at the start of the period to 2,654 last year. Partial numbers from this year suggest the trend continues.

More than 6,300 troops in the three branches lost their clearances during that four-year period. Roughly 900,000 people are serving in the three branches, though not all need clearances.

The figures gathered by the AP represent just a piece of problem, because the Army - which employs an additional 500,000 people and accounts for the vast majority of the 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - rejected repeated requests over the past month to supply its data, saying such information is confidential, wishing not to reveal those that use no fax payday loans of any kind.

At Point Loma, Patton said clearance revocations in key areas such as military police forces have gotten so common that he often looks for two sailors to fill a single posting.

Still, Patton said he had never heard of anyone racking up bills to get out of combat.

"There are folks who find ways of avoiding being deployed, as there always will be, but I've never seen any do it through finances," he said.

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