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  3. Short of money? Need an instant loan? Since the early 1990s your best bet has been to go to the low-rent end of town and find an

Short of money? Need an instant loan? Since the early 1990s your best bet has been to go to the low-rent end of town and find an

admin2009-04-26  71
问题     Short of money? Need an instant loan? Since the early 1990s your best bet has been to go to the low-rent end of town and find an appointed loan-shop. There you can borrow money in small amounts, generally not much more than $500, against your post-dated pay-cheque. You will be charged around $15 interest for every $100 you borrow—and that is per month.
    For many people, there is no alternative. Banks refuse to make small loans because there is no money in it, and completely unregulated lending, via the internet or loan sharks, is too alarming. According to the Community Financial Services Association, an advocacy group for the industry, most borrowers are responsible and pay off their loans in a timely manner. But some don’t.
    The Centre for Responsible Lending, a consumer group, says that many borrowers routinely roll over their loans. This quickly brings them into debt traps. A typical borrower may end up paying $793 for a $325 loan. The centre estimates that payday loans cost Americans $4.2 billion a year in interest and fees.
    The industry thrives, in large part, because it operates mostly outside state usury laws that prohibit excessive interest rates. Its spokesmen say lenders need such exemptions to make a profit on their basic service, small loans. Lenders say that their returns would amount to pennies on the dollar if interest rates were capped. In fact, they say, such restrictions would put them out of business.
    And that is exactly what many of their opponents would like to see—particularly when it comes to loans made to the families of soldiers. In one of the last acts of the Republican Congress, payday lenders were restricted to interest rates of 36% on loans to military personnel and their spouses. The Pentagon is worried that uniformed personnel, especially those serving in Iraq, have been losing their security clearances because of excessive debt at home. This, among other things, was leading to the costly reassignment of highly trained troops, such as communications experts, to ordinary low-skill jobs.
    Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University, wrote recently in the New York Times that the industry—not unlike the sub-prime mortgage sector—is a beneficiary of the sweeping deregulation of the financial-services industry that has made credit more accessible. Its adverse consequences, he says, were" completely predictable". Once poor people get in over their heads, they will borrow themselves into bankruptcy if the law permits; and" if we are unhappy about that, the only solution is to change the rules".
选项 A、Go to the bank and try to make a commercial loan.
B、Ask for help on the internet to get donations.
C、Get some loan at a relatively low rate from the government.
D、Borrow money from designated firms at a fixed rate.
答案D
解析 为细节理解题。根据第2段内容，银行由于无利可图，不愿意提供小额贷款，因此A项不对。虽然出现了internet等词，文章中并没有提到网络捐赠或政府贷款等相应问题，因此B、C也不对。根据本文所讨论的中心话题，也就是小额高息贷款问题，应当选D。
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