![Predatory lenders are making money off rising gas and food prices](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220622135809-mississippi-gas-prices-file-super-tease.jpg)
Predatory lenders are making money off rising gas and food prices
CNN
In the last few months, Yumekia Jones, a legal assistant at the Mississippi Center for Justice's Indianola office, has fielded an unusually high number of calls — a roughly 400% spike — from people in dire need of immediate financial assistance.
Most want to avoid payday loans, which offer quick cash against future paychecks without a credit check and come with an interest rate above 500%. But the rapidly increasing prices of food, fuel and rent gives them few options.
Inflation rates are at a 40-year high and unemployment is near a half-century low. To most economists those two realities spell out significant economic trouble.
![](/newspic/picid-6252001-20240615095352.jpg)
Donald Trump’s campaign is taking a vastly different approach to 2024 compared to 2020, with plans for fewer staff and expenses, including what they view as superfluous brick and mortar offices. Instead, the campaign pledges to run a more efficient operation that will rely heavily on data modeling, microtargeting and relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure and significant bank accounts to help find Trump a pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory in November.
![](/newspic/picid-6252001-20240615004358.jpg)
“I never thought I would see a Russian submarine so up close,” said a Cuban man next to me as we waited in line in view of the four vessels. We were standing outside the port terminal in Havana which, just years earlier, had been full of US cruise ships, until then-President Donald Trump banned their visits to the island in 2019.