I used to like Tucker Carlson. It seems that he is going down the path of Glenn Beck, sliding into populist insanity.
A few days ago he did a bit backing Bernie and AOC in an “anti-loan shark bill” which would cap interest rates at 15%.
I get it. Predatory loans are awful. I watched what payday loans and title loans did to the poor in South Dakota. Those people are on the same level as Pawn Brokers for scum sucking garbage humans who make their living ripping off the poor.
But……
The basics of baking are this:
Banks lend money. They charge interest for the money they lend. That is how banks make money. Some of that money is then given to the people who have invested in the back or put money in the bank, which is where the banks get their money to begin with.
When banks lend money, there is always the risk it won’t get paid back.
The riskier the loan, the more the bank charges in interest, so they can make as much money off the loan as they can in as short a period of time. Also, as a risk pool, the high interest it gets from the people who pay back their loans is a hedge against the percent of loans that default.
For personal finances, a person’s credit score is the metric used to gauge the ability of the borrower to pay back a loan over an extended period of time. The higher the credit score, the less risky the loan, the lower the interest rate, as the bank will make its money over the long term length of the loan.
Poor people are the riskiest borrowers so have the highest interest rates. That sucks, but that’s how it works.
So what happens when interest rates get capped at 15%?
The same thing as when the minimum wage gets set to $15/hour.
Poor people get screwed.
Lenders stop lending money to risky borrowers. The poor and low income earners will go from high interest rates loans to no loans. They simply won’t be able to borrow money from legal sources.
Credit limits would be reduced for all but the richest people.
I guarantee the banks will push for reforms to bankruptcy law that makes it harder for people to declare bankruptcy or make bank loans like student loans.
There is no free lunch here.
To me, this seems like the Obamacare scam of banking. An idea designed to make banking and credit so much worse than it is now, that it will create an upswell in people calling for nationalizing the banks.
So why is Tucker supporting this?
Then I saw this:
I get it. I don’t want another protracted war in the Middle East. I don’t want 20 years of occupation in Iran. Not to mention the casualties that would result in that war.
That will suck.
But Iran supplies weapons and training to every Islamic terrorist cell in the world at this point. Iran supplied weapons, especially armor piercing ones, to the Iraqi insurgency. They arm Hamas and Hezbollah. They helped the Syrian mass murdering tyrant Assad. They are arming the Islamist groups in Africa and Asia murdering Christians.
The tormented our Navy and commercial shipping vessels in international waters off their coast.
It is the heart of the Axis of Evil.
So why engage in isolationism. This is on par with wanting to ignore the Empire of Japan or Nazi Germany in 1940.
They are clearly attacking our allies and being a thorn in our side.
We got out of our isolationism with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
What Tucker here seems to want is peace, right up until Iran drops a Nuke on Tel-Aviv or puts one in a ship that goes off in the Port of New York.
If he doesn’t want American boots on the ground, fine. Fighting a ground war against the Iranian Republican Guard will be a hard fight.
Then we better be prepared to deal with Iran in other ways.
Personally, I favor saturating Iran with so much ionizing radiation that the populations’ DNA is no longer capable of replication.
What Tucker wants will only result in an American and/or Israeli city being irradiated, and that is unacceptable.
I can’t believe that Democrats don’t want to go on Fox News, because at this point, the highest rated Fox News host is a Bernie Bro.
Tucker is fed up with sacrificing American lives and money taking out Israel’s regional rivals.
Iran has been at war with the U.S. since the late 70s. We’ve just never bothered to recognize it and she the war.
Matt:
Israel’s “regional rivals” are the reason that you and I and granny in the wheel chair, and gramps with a cane and a pacemaker, get patted-down by TSA every time we fly a commerical airliner.
Remember when the politicians took action to fix the disparity in mortgage lenders providing loans to minorities? Yeah, worked out real well.
The law of unintended consequences is always, ALWAYS in full effect.
If dealing with Iran meant glassing every place with >100k population I’d be fine with that, Iraq and Afghanistan show that trying to rebuild these places will be a cluster fuck and will not ever be worth the American lives it will cost. Very little of Iran’s support for terrorists directly affect the US, let the countries that are having issues deal with them.
As far as these fucked up loan rates, screw them, they are just loan sharks. Anyone you have to charge that kind of interest rate is the kind of person who shouldn’t be getting a loan to begin with. It’s like ripping off the mentally retarded. So they won’t be able to get their bling and a new Iphone until they learn to plan ahead and handle money, big deal.
This is untrue re loans, I reserve opinion on the other matter. All the major banks charged those interest rates on at least students loans. I received a number of private loans from major banks for variable rate loans tied to libor, this was and still is common practice for those loans. What does that mean? Right now interest rates are great. Back in 2008 and on that meant 12% or higher. *EDIT* Oh yea I should add that was for some loans with 20 year terms too! When you are halfway through college and your parents run out of credit or you run out of scholarship money you are a captive, desperate market with few options but to go with “the best loan products offered” for education.
If there is any rate cap I would support it would be on student loans, overall I think that would me a much greater boost to the economy than not capping them, but that is assuming we don’t dismantle the entire fucked up education system we have now.
I would rather end federally backed student loans. As easy as they are to get now everyone gets one which is leading to the rapid increse in cost of education. After all colleges don’t have to worry about priceing themselves out of the market currently, their customers are pratically guarenteed loans.
This 100%
Agree 100%. Even more pressing for me though is ending the lie that everyone needs to go to college. That is inflating costs just as much or more and is making a bachelor’s meaningless since it doesn’t distinguish you in any way now except in tj circumstance of some technical degrees
Matt, I’m not so sure. I know that my own life is markedly enhanced when my plumber or mason has a OF A degree in Renaissance German Literature. (Sarc!)
It certainly is nice to have an intellectual conversation with the rooter man but I doubt it helps him with his present work; and I say this having two liberal arts degrees that I remain skeptical have done anything for me professionally.