[.ca] Predatory Bender: A Story of Subprime Finance (ISBN 0974024414)

Predatory Bender: book exposes predatory lenders with humor:
"Predatory Bender" by Matthew Lee is a sharp book that aims to expose a sharp practice: the ways in which banks target poor communities with high cost loans, foreclose on people's homes, and trap them in debt. The novel is set in a low income part of New York, the Bronx. A woman gets a loan, not to buy a house but a bed, strangely or appropriately enough. She is sold insurance; all told, she owes over five thousand dollars. The man making the loan, Jack Bender, at first laughs, but soon enough things change for him. His own company, the so-called EmpiGroup, seemingly based on the world's largest bank, turns on him, sicking the police on him. He offers evidence first to a dodgy community activist-type, then to a similarly (but differently) dodgy plaintiffs' lawyer, who approaches the attorney general, who because ambitious is in league with Empi, and things go from there. The chief executives of Empigroup, including one hired from the Clinton cabinet, are caricatured as they try to put out this unlikely bed-loan fire. But the fire just grows... With this novel, Mr. Lee has defied expectations, at least of this reader. The book is not simplistic; it does not paint all consumers as pure and all lenders as ruthless. Everyone is subject to some satire, including characters we'd assume are near or dear to the author (drawing this assumption from www.innercitypress.org/formedia.html). "Predatory Bender," as novel, is a dark comedy, a sort of subprime lending Catch-22, or reminiscent of the fiction of another (then) Bronx writer, Don DeLillo. Neither analogy quite captures it -- "Predatory Bender" is truly a unique book, or books -- its afterword, "Predatory Lending: Toxic Credit in the Global Inner City," is printed upside down, such that the book can be started from either direction. The afterword is keyed to the novel's 60 chapters; one may wish to jump from one to the other and back, as in the Internet's hypertext mark-up language. By the end of the experience, one knows more about predatory lending and those who suffer, practice and profit from it; one has insights into how and why government investigations begin and end, so often without bringing about real change, and one may then want, as this reader did, to change the conditions that allows this reverse Robin Hood groove to go on. One has also laughed, repeatedly, as well as groaning and shaking one's head. All in all, not a bad ride, for a paperback novel. We'll be hearing more from Matthew Lee, it's fair to surmise, unless the banks get him first.

Informative and edgy:
It's a really great read. Lee has created some very well rounded characters. It's topical and the humor is edgy.

Bender is a Must:
Predatory Bender is in the best of the Mucraking tradition. What Upton Sinclair is to exposing the meat industry, Matthew Lee is to exposing predatory lenders. This book is captivating; its characters are complex and leap off the page. The protagonist himself is complicated. Although he can be absolutely disgusting, he also shows remorse for his lending misdeeds and seeks, in his self-serving way, to expose the worse elements in the industry. To a well-read layperson, predatory lending is becoming too familiar through numerous media accounts of the last few years. Mr. Lee's book will hopefully push the national momentum to do something over the top, and will motivate Congress and the federal government to outlaw this heinous practice. Just as it was necessary for the federal government to create standards for the food industry, it is necessary for the government to establish strong protections in the lending industry so that hard-working families do not lose their wealth at the hands of predatory lenders. We all should thank Mr. Lee for making a valuable contribution to the national discourse over this pressing problem. Predatory Benders is a must read! Buy it for your loved ones for a holiday gift!

Beating the devil with an ugly stick:
A great read! The steam was still rising off the words when I sat down to read Mr. Lee's novel about a predatory lender and the colorful group of characters bobbling about it. The characterizations are heavy-handed, yet curiously deft; there can be no doubt as you read about EmpiGroup and its no-holds-barred leader, Sandy Vyle, that you're getting a rollicking send up of Citigroup, the Borg corporation that glides through American financial life with the message that "resistance is futile." This is not an English major's novel (Mr. Lee could have used a better proofreader and a tough editor), but if you're sick of corporations that run the world, government regulators who run interference for them, and journalists for whom the term "investigative" is a historical curiosity, then buy this book and enjoy several hours of a smart, funny writer who clearly enjoys mixing it up with the Big Boys. In the end the EmpiGroups of the world will win, but Mr. Lee gives them a few bruises to remember him by.

Awful!:
While the goals of the author may be noble in that he's trying to combat the wrong that is predatory lending, this book is a litle too simple, a little too boring, and more than a little in need of an editor (Typos litter the book, but the stream of consciousness "writing style" is a little tough to take). The book is a little too simplistic in its indictment of predatory lending. The thesis seems to be that caveat emptor should be turned on its head, and somehow multi-billion dollar corporations are supposed to step in a tell someone that they maybe shouldn't buy a new bed, or a new stereo from Rent-a-center, etc., or that consumers shouldn't bother reading contracts that they sign. The author fails to understand that while predatory and abusive lending is bad, there may be a purpose for appropriate sub-prime lending. The author fails to grasp the notion that maybe loans to borrowers with poor credit records should be priced a little higher given the risk of lending to someone who has defaulted or been slow to pay in the past.