In these hard times, more people than ever are using payday loans to keep bill collectors at bay. Quick money for people with bad credit has been praised by some as a lifeline for the poor and condemned by others as a money trap exploiting families in crisis. Several states have passed laws limiting interest rates, but there is one marketplace that seems to recognize no borders — the Internet.
Videographer Lagan Sebert has been tracing the many ways Americans have been ringing up record debt. For this story, Sebert first staked out a conference on Capitol Hill where online payday lenders and lobbyists honed their arguments to Congress against reform; then he traveled to a small town near the Virginia-North Carolina border to learn about the experiences of a man who one day googled “bad credit loans” and soon found himself in more trouble than he bargained for: