MONEY MAGIC It may be that I have missed some little point along the way in trying to keep up with the financial world of our time, but I can't quite get with the idea that allows us to have stores at which we can buy and sell money.
How can it be that, with all our talk about managing money and reams of laws written specifically to control the rates which can be charged when one person allows an other to use his or her money. It was called "usury" when said charges for the renting of funds got out-of-hand or came to be elusive when called by other names.
I don't think empty store-front real-estate in run down sections of some of our cities and towns - even few villages and wide places in the road, have blossomed and bloomed nourished by some hidden growth system. The outward aspect of the old stores have been generously daubed with buckets of paint or with layers of vinyl coverings to cancel years of wear without care. Such work is always hasty modification ,not remodeling to last for a while. The old store front is needed once again., but not for long... just until the bubble causing it's revival - bursts. Inside, the store itself has been shortened. About thirty feet is required; three-laned with and a convenient stand-up desk-counted just wide enough to hold a checkbook.
There are variations, of course, but , in general the eager client walks up to one of the windows holding in hand a post-dated check - perhaps the date used is
his or her next pay day where they work the exact sequence of events to take place until the borrowed amount of money is returned to the grill-windowed-person with interest charges appended.
This can be the moment of crisis. What was the true rate of interest agreed at the start ? What are varied "charges'? How did they get there? What rate of interest was actually used? I hear many questions about these money stores and wonder how much longer they can last. I remember when our banks stopped doing "small loans". They handed them over to credit card firms where "small" loans became "large"ones and the current money markets are, I suppose, a logical step - and an unsteady one at best.
I wonder what will come along next? Perhaps a - "Do It Yourself " or a "Print Your Own Plan."
A.L.M. March 17, 2006 [c424wds]
