Thanks to my colleague Wendell Sherk for the pointer to the site of Americans for Fairness in Lending

I found their 10 Top Tricks of the Lending Trade right on point. The day before I had seen an earnest couple with a loan on their only car on which they owed twice what the car was worth. They were poster children for the techniques employed to sell bad deals to consumers. Given the age of this loan, a Chapter 13 will allow us to strip the secured obligation down to the present value of the car. I haven’t calculated how much they have overpaid before they got to my office.

This is all on point for me as I ponder what can I expect clients to learn from the circumstances that brought them to bankruptcy. In the case of my car buying couple, the fundamental problem of the couple was insufficient work in the husband’s trade and low wages in the wife’s restaurant industry. But the bad car loan may have been a precipitating factor that kept them from scraping by.

Is it reasonable to think that Joe Average can become sophisticated enough to avoid the rip offs? Is there a legislative strategy that won’t cripple honest business? Wish I knew, but it’s clear we need to think about it.