Six payday lending stores have opened in Clover over the past two years, and two more are looking for space there. Rock Hill sports 10 quick loan stores, all within about a mile of the state line off Interstate 77. There are now 50 payday-loan stores in York and Lancaster counties, up from 40 in 2004.

Altogether, the state has about 1,100 such stores. In recent years they have processed tens of millions of loans and raked in hundreds of millions in profits on the high interest charges made possible by the state's hands-off approach to loan-sharking.

North Carolina essentially banned these businesses in 2001, with the last three stores shutting down earlier this month. In South Carolina, however, payday lenders are permitted to charge up to 15 cent for every dollar borrowed, with loans due in full within two weeks. The annualized interest rate on such a loan totals nearly 400 percent.

No well-to-do person with access to a traditional lending institution would dream of paying interest that high or signing in the dotted line to repay a loan in two weeks. But that's not the clientele these street-corner lenders are targeting.

They can charge these outrageous fees because they often are the only lending institutions that will serve clients with no credit history and no access to conventional banks and savings & loans. These clients often are poor and can't qualify for a normal loan.

Sadly, however, that matches the most cutthroat lenders with the most vulnerable customers. And while lenders no doubt would argue that their customers also are the least likely to be able to pay back their loans, thus justifying the high interest rates, it also is evident that these institutions prey on the most desperate, naive and unsophisticated members of society.

Those people have money emergencies just as almost everyone does. And whatever their circumstances, they need to be held accountable for their own financial decisions to some extent.

But at the same time that Congress is phasing out lenient bankruptcy laws, the failure of the federal government or the state of South Carolina to clamp down on usurious lenders is a cruel oversight.

North Carolina obviously has concluded that its citizens don't need the services of payday loan stores. South Carolina should consider following suit as more and more people cross the state line looking for a loan.