Sean O'Connell
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199263318
- eISBN:
- 9780191718793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263318.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and ...
More
This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and commercialized backstreet feminized affectual relationships between borrowers and lenders. The extent to which their success was dependent on the decline of pawnbroking and mail order agency (and the limitations of the government's Social Fund) is explained. The motivations and limited options of moneylenders' customers are explored as are accusations of ‘predatory lending’ and exploitation. Moneylenders fought PR battles to exclude themselves from the label ‘loan shark’, as images of criminal moneylenders increasingly replaced ones of ‘Shylocks’. The chapter examines the role of violent loan sharks, explaining their small but significant market. Particularly important was the fact that government resisted calls for interest rate caps because it feared legal lenders would abandon their riskiest borrowers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks.Less
This chapter explains the success of companies such as Provident Financial and Cattles (both members of the FTSE 250 by the 1990s). Their agents serviced the growing sub-prime sector and commercialized backstreet feminized affectual relationships between borrowers and lenders. The extent to which their success was dependent on the decline of pawnbroking and mail order agency (and the limitations of the government's Social Fund) is explained. The motivations and limited options of moneylenders' customers are explored as are accusations of ‘predatory lending’ and exploitation. Moneylenders fought PR battles to exclude themselves from the label ‘loan shark’, as images of criminal moneylenders increasingly replaced ones of ‘Shylocks’. The chapter examines the role of violent loan sharks, explaining their small but significant market. Particularly important was the fact that government resisted calls for interest rate caps because it feared legal lenders would abandon their riskiest borrowers, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks.
Shuxia Jiang
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195380644
- eISBN:
- 9780199869329
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195380644.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, International, South and East Asia
This chapter details the evolution of Chinese informal finance, describing the different types of informal finance that have eased constraints posed by the formal financial sector. It discusses why ...
More
This chapter details the evolution of Chinese informal finance, describing the different types of informal finance that have eased constraints posed by the formal financial sector. It discusses why informal finance is important and how it has evolved, as well as what can be further done to improve informal finance. Informal finance has been rejuvenated since the reform and opening-up policy of the 1980s, as China has experienced the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, as well as the transition from single-ownership to multi-ownership and a rapid boom of the private economy. Because of the critical role of informal finance in the economy, the government should regard informal finance as a “weathervane” that can forecast the credit demand of the financial market; as an innovation, which can optimize the allocation of institutional resources; and as an induced institutional arrangement, which can fix up the problems brought about by state-oriented financing and institutional change.Less
This chapter details the evolution of Chinese informal finance, describing the different types of informal finance that have eased constraints posed by the formal financial sector. It discusses why informal finance is important and how it has evolved, as well as what can be further done to improve informal finance. Informal finance has been rejuvenated since the reform and opening-up policy of the 1980s, as China has experienced the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, as well as the transition from single-ownership to multi-ownership and a rapid boom of the private economy. Because of the critical role of informal finance in the economy, the government should regard informal finance as a “weathervane” that can forecast the credit demand of the financial market; as an innovation, which can optimize the allocation of institutional resources; and as an induced institutional arrangement, which can fix up the problems brought about by state-oriented financing and institutional change.
