8-30-10: Hey, Give Me a Little Credit Here

This conversation originally aired September 28, 2009.

One of the major casualties of the great recession is the personal credit score. A quarter of American consumers are below 600 – the point at which lenders start turning up their noses.

So — where to go besides the pawn shop or the corner check cashing store? Sheilah talks to two guests about alternative lending sources. 

Seth Freedman, who was a graduate economics student at the University of Maryland and is now an assistant professor at Indiana University, co-authored a working paper on peer-to-peer lending.

Neighborhood Housing Services executive director Felix Torres Colon helped develop an FDIC-sponsored program that gives small loans to low-income borrowers after they complete “financial fitness classes.”