Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.How the Working Poor Became Big Business

[RamboLiberal]

From Publishers Weekly
Journalist Rivlin (Fire on the Prairie) offers a superb exposé of the poverty business—the flock of companies that cater to (and prey on) the working poor. For people living paycheck to paycheck and sometimes falling behind with rent, car payments, and grocery bills, fringe financing and the ubiquitous Rent-A-Centers, Jackson Hewitt, payday lenders, pawnshops, and check cashers—may seem like their only safety net. These businesses may tout themselves as a necessary service and force for economic development in low-income communities, but Rivlin reveals their dark underbelly: punishing rates of interest and customer service reps explicitly trained to mislead customers who appear gullible. He delves into the effect of financial deregulation on fringe financing, predatory subprime lending, and the major players in this unsavory world, including Allan Jones, a debt collector, worth $200 million, and the activists and advocates like Bill Brennan who've faced them down in the courts. A timely, important, and deeply disturbing look at the cycle of debt of the nation's most vulnerable. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Gary Rivlin rivets readers.” (—Fast Company )

“Broke USA will leave you mad as hell. Thanks, Gary Rivlin, for introducing us to folks like Bill Brennan, who early on saw it coming: the predatory lending that has destroyed communities. If only we had listened.” (—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and Never a City So Real )

“With revealing stories, Gary Rivlin spotlights the systematic, widespread economic abuse of the poor by supposedly respectable corporations whose predatory conduct breeds misery and undoes many efforts by taxpayers to alleviate poverty.” (—David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Free Lunch and Perfectly Legal )

“A fascinating and very important work of investigation and explanation, which I hope gets the wide attention it deserves.... This is a book with the potential to stimulate outrage—and political reform.” (—James Fallows, the Atlantic author of Breaking the News )

“offers a superb expose of the ‘poverty business’... A timely, important, and deeply disturbing look at the cycle of dept in the nation’s most vulnerable.” (—Publishers Weekly )

http://www.amazon.com/Broke-USA-Pawnshops-Poverty-Business/dp/0061733210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278102034&sr=1-1

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