America's Captains of Industry, Poverty Baron Edition

[Donnachaidh]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/allan-jones-payday-loan

Meet the megalenders, payday loan inventors, and pawnshop popularizers behind the logos.

ROSS LONGFIELD, former executive VP, Beneficial Corp.
INNOVATION: Invented the refund anticipation loan.
FINE PRINT: Longfield bet that low-income customers would pay dearly to get their tax refunds right away. "Everything we did suggested people would love it—love it to death," he said.
UPSHOT: Now retired, Longfield has the leisure to race around Patagonia in his prized 1969 E-Type Jaguar SII coupe.


ALLAN JONES, CEO, Check Into Cash.
INNOVATION: Pioneered payday lending.
FINE PRINT: A small-town debt collector from Tennessee, Jones made a killing by making small loans—at 400 percent interest or more—against a person's next paycheck, Social Security payment, or unemployment check.
UPSHOT: Jones clears some $20 million a year from his 1,000-plus stores. He owns a pair of jets and a 650-acre estate, complete with stables and a football stadium.

ERNIE TALLEY, CEO emeritus, Rent-A-Center.
INNOVATION: Fathered the rent-to-own industry.
FINE PRINT: Talley started the first store in the 1960s. He and his imitators figured out that the rent-to-own customer would spend $2,000 to buy the same TV set that a person with ready credit could buy outright for $800.
UPSHOT: The industry booked $7 billion last year; Rent-A-Center's 3,000 stores boast profit margins twice as large as Best Buy's.

More at the link --