Few industries are more reviled than payday lending, which primarily services the working poor by offering short-term loans at high interest rates. Payday customers borrow an average of $350 for a period of two weeks, or until their next paycheck comes in. The money is handed over on the spot, once the payday store can verify that the customer has a job, earns enough to afford the loan, and hasn’t recently defaulted with another vendor. Payday loans are in high demand: There are 22,000 payday storefronts in the United States and in 2009 they loaned a combined $35 billion.

And yet the industry is fighting for its survival. Montana just voted to make it illegal for the payday-loan industry to operate profitably, so lenders are loading their wagons and wheeling out of “The Land of the Shining Mountains.” They’ve already moved on from Oregon, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Washington, D.C, because of similar regulations. The annualized interest on payday loans runs about 400 percent, but the reality is that payday firms see returns closer to 10 percent, or about the same as other less-demonized financial service providers.

Now there’s a danger the federal government will quash the rest of the U.S. payday industry. The Frank-Dodd Financial Reform bill, passed in July, created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which posseses the power to regulate paydays at the national level for the first time. The vaguely written law doesn’t allow the CFPB to cap interest rates, but regulators have the latitude to enact other rules that would obliterate profits, such as limiting the number of payday loans a customer can take out over a set period of time.

Payday critics, such as the Center for Financial Responsible Lending (which declined our interview request) argue that payday stores “trap” their customers and practice what “amounts to legal loan sharking.”

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Friday night on National Public Radio, a fitting place to announce an unprecedented growth in federal power, Sen. Chris Dodd praised his partner in crime Sen. Bob Corker for working together to create an “independent, autonomous, rule- writing entity, unlike anything we’ve ever had before.”  That is exactly why Tea Party activists from across the Volunteer State gathered in front of Corker’s office this past week to protest his back room dealmaking.

Why would  Corker ignore his constituents and abandon all conservative principles to work for legislation that earns him praise from Chris Dodd of all people?  Here’s why.

The big banks and Wall Street firms support the President’s Financial Reform package.  The House passed bill contains the mother of all bailouts — a $4 trillion authorization for the Federal Reserve to continue to bailout firms for decades to come.  In fact, as conservatives in the House reminded us when the Obama/Frank bill was on the floor, this bill makes bailouts the permanent policy of the US government.  And who gets those bailouts?  The same banks and firms that support the bill.  And who does Wall Street rain campaign contributions on?  None other than Bailout Bob Corker.

Corker has raised over $3 million from Wall Street and related firms since being elected to the Senate.  That’s a lot for a freshman Senator.  It seems like Wall Street is finally getting a good return on their investment.

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