We cannot ignore this any longer.
Usury
In Utah, the self-declared heart of moral America, lies the legal epicenter of an economic cancer that is metastasizing through our nation: usury. Beneath the veil of faith, community, and clean living, predatory lenders operate with impunity—sanctioned by loopholes, shielded by lawmakers, and financed by Wall Street. While children sleep in cars and veterans beg for relief, payday loan companies post billion-dollar profits. The state that once championed modesty and family has become a sanctuary for legalized extortion. And it must end.
Usury—once condemned by scripture, philosophy, and nearly every legal code in Western history—has returned not just as an economic practice but as a system of domination. Under the banner of “consumer choice,” lenders charge interest rates as high as 400%, preying on the poor, the desperate, and the misled. And Utah, with its lax regulation and deregulated lending laws, has become the Delaware of predatory finance—the state where shadow lenders incorporate, exploit federal preemption laws, and export misery across the country.
Consider this: in Utah, a single mother making $15 an hour can legally be trapped in a cycle of payday loans that require her to pay back $1,200 on a $300 advance. And if she can’t pay? Roll it over. Charge more. Garnish her wages. Drag her to court. Strip her tax return. It’s not banking—it’s bondage.
Utah’s politicians will not stop it. The state legislature—heavily funded by the payday lending lobby—has repeatedly blocked interest rate caps and regulatory reform. Even modest transparency measures have been gutted. Why? Because payday lenders know that transparency is death. They thrive on obfuscation, on legalese, on trapping people in contracts they don’t understand. And they laugh—behind their LLCs and their storefronts—while families break under the weight of phantom debt.
But the most shameful part of all is that this is happening in a place that claims moral high ground. Utah is over 60% Latter-day Saint—members of a church that explicitly condemns excessive interest, teaches self-reliance, and urges care for the poor. And yet, the state’s own laws facilitate the immiseration of the vulnerable. In scriptural terms, it is hypocrisy. In human terms, it is suffering. In economic terms, it is systemic theft.
Usury is not just about interest. It is the inversion of value. It is when money—created from nothing—is allowed to multiply endlessly while labor, blood, and time shrink in worth. It is when a man who works 60 hours a week can still be homeless, while a lender who clicks “approve” on an online loan earns millions. It is a theft not just of income, but of dignity. It poisons neighborhoods. It keeps the poor from rising. It widens racial and generational wealth gaps. It teaches children that debt is their inheritance and freedom a myth.
This is not sustainable. This is not moral. This is not American.
We must restore the ancient line: There must be a limit to what one man can charge another for the privilege of survival. We must end federal preemption that allows lenders in Utah to bypass state laws elsewhere. We must pass a national interest rate cap—no more than 36% APR, as recommended by the Department of Defense for protecting military families. We must outlaw rollover loans, demand plain-language disclosures, and prohibit garnishment for predatory contracts. But more than laws, we need cultural clarity: debt is not freedom. Exploitation is not capitalism. Profit without conscience is not progress.
If Utah will not change, then America must change without her. But I believe it is not too late. I believe there are people—good people—in that state who remember what it means to build Zion not with gold, but with justice. To serve not mammon, but one another.
Usury is the oldest evil in civilization. It enslaved Rome, it sparked revolutions, and it was condemned by Christ Himself when He overturned the tables of the moneylenders. It is not clever. It is not innovation. It is greed in its purest, most cancerous form.
Let this generation be the one that ends it.
Let the future look back and say: They stood. They fought. They drew the line and said: You shall not charge the poor for being poor. You shall not make a nation of debtors. You shall not profit off suffering and call it service.
Because if we do not stop this now—if we allow the desert to keep swallowing the desperate—then we are not a civilized nation.
We are a cartel with flags.