Wright Andrews: March 2010

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Wright Andrews: March 2010

Pay-Day Lenders

With Heavy Washington Presence, Pay-Day Lenders Sway Lawmakers, Attack Critics

Zachary Roth | March 17, 2010, 12:39PM

The weakening of the Senate proposal on financial reform unveiled this week, after lobbying from the pay-day lending industry, should come as little surprise. In recent years, the industry has built a sophisticated Washington lobbying and public relations operation, which it has used to promote its interests, savage its critics, and shape the public debate.

The $42-billion-a-year pay-day lending industry offers short-term loans often designed to tide customers over until their next pay-check. But the loans, which can carry interest rates of as much as 400 percent on an annualized basis, lead many working-class borrowers to end up digging themselves deeper into debt. As a result, the pay-day lenders have become a prime target of consumer advocates and their allies on Congress, who accuse the industry of preying on struggling Americans, and have in recent years sought ways to rein it in.

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Topics: Financial Crisis, Financial Regulation, Lobbyists, Pay-Day Lenders, Public Relations, W. Allan Jones, Wright Andrews

Wright Andrews

Master Of Disaster: The Go-To Washington Lobbyist For Financial Predators

Zachary Roth | March 11, 2010, 3:45PM

Wright Andrews

The same Washington lobbyist who led the sub-prime mortgage industry's successful bid to shoot down government efforts to curtail risky lending is now helping pay-day lenders to water down the financial-regulatory reform bill currently before Congress.

Wright Andrews has developed a niche representing some of the least sympathetic and most predatory players in the financial industry. A veteran lawyer-lobbyist and one-time aide to Democratic senator Sam Nunn, Andrews has lobbied extensively of late for a trade association for pay-day lenders -- which offer short-term, high-interest loans to the working poor, often triggering a cycle of debt for their customers. During the last decade, Andrews ran three different trade groups for the sub-prime mortgage industry, whose home loans defaulted in massive numbers to set off the financial crisis.