Vampire Diaries: Payday Lenders Live. Again.

I stood beside Van Helsing, and said, "Ah well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!"

He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity, "Not so, alas! Not so. It is only the beginning!"

When I asked him what he meant, he only shook his head and answered, "We can do nothing as yet. Wait and see."—Bram Stoker, Dracula

Yeah, I know. In a rare move of moral clarity, last year the South Carolina legislature killed the blood-sucking beast known as payday lending. They laid in it the ground on a moonlit night and damn if the thing hasn't risen from its grave.


A few days before the new law was to go into effect in February 1, Attorney General Henry McMaster ruled that the law's provision to force the bloodsuckers to put their records into a database--and thus prevent multiple loans from being made to vulnerable and desperate consumers--would not be enforced. Even though he concedes that "the purpose of the Act will be frustrated," his position is that privacy rights of consumers outweigh the intent of the legislature to control the vampires.


And vampires being vampires, they will always find a better way to suck blood. More than 90 payday lenders have applied for licensing as "regular lenders" which, in the anarchy of libertarian South Carolina, means that they can still charge 400% or more in interest to people who have only turned to them because they have run out of other options. 


So, here we go again. Can’t anybody figure out how to run this state?