Ha, you haven't seen really outrageous interest rates. Here in Uruguay banks have 40 to 50% annual interest rate, and the equivalent to payday lenders have over

Ha, you haven't seen really outrageous interest rates. Here in Uruguay banks have 40 to 50% annual interest rate, and the equivalent to payday lenders have over 100% annual interest rates. The interesting thing is that the U.S. dollar actually went down this year, so they had an even bigger interest rate in US dollars. Of course, there are periodic crises where lenders are wiped out (latest in 2002), and that "justifies" the predatory interest rates :( . But lending is huge here and it has made a lot of people rich. I really hope P2P lending takes off, a few startups are working on it here.