[Christien]

That's the standard perception, and, as usual, it's completely wrong.

We charge 26% interest (our standard rate) because 1/4 of our customers force us to do so. Our net is around 5%. But 3/4 of our customer ARE credit worthy, in that they're not deadbeats. For whatever reason, they've had credit issues and are trying to rebuild. Sure, they bounce the odd payment, but they always make them up and are rarely behind on their payments more than a few weeks. But because we lose money on the 1/4 that are indeed deadbeats, we have to charge high interest rates. But I'll repeat, our net is about 5%.

Very rarely do our customers complete their term. A few get repossessed, but most get refinanced somewhere else, at a better rate. I'm always happy to write reference letters, and do so frequently for good customers. There's always someone else to take their place, and usually we have more applications than we have capital to loan out, so there's never a shortage of new business.

Rather than contributing to the global financial crisis, it's companies like mine that help honest people get back on their feet. If you want to point fingers at who caused the current mess, look at predatory lenders. We're not in any way predatory - we're not trying to screw people. Every single bit of our business is legit - there's no trickery or attempts to fool people. As I said, we don't need to play games to get more business.