3 research outputs found
Alamo Lumber and Texas Usury Law: Playing with Fire in the Usury Forest.
The effect of Alamo Lumber Co. v. Gold, and later cases interpreting third party assumption of debt as interest can be perilous to lenders. Lenders are in the business of offering loans to make money. Lenders achieve profit maximization by charging as much interest as possible in the market. Although economic and market factors are always considerations in a lender’s business, in Texas, lenders must also consider harsh usury laws that restrain the maximum amount of chargeable loan interest. Texas defines interest broadly. Statutes define interest as the receipt of compensation for the detention, forbearance or use of money. The expansive definition of interest often results in usury problems when lenders charge separate fees, other than and in addition to interest, and a court considers these fees to be interest. Additionally, facts surrounding the issuance of loans may result in a courting finding usurious interest, even if interest amounts are not excessive. The Texas Supreme court held in Alamo Lumber that when a lender requires a borrower to accept a third party debt to secure a loan, the debt obligation of the third party is a portion of the borrower’s interest making the loan usurious. While the scenario appears to be straight forward, there are several situations where a court could potentially apply Alamo Lumber in holding a loan usurious. Party’s relationship to the debt, financial analysis, independent consideration, defining debt of another, collateral pledge, contingent obligations, savings clauses, and federal regulations may all affect a courts final ruling interpreting loan conditions as interest. Usury penalties in Texas are severe. Penalty may include three times the usurious interest in addition to potentially forfeiting principal. Lenders must be diligent in reviewing the conditions of their loans to ensure avoidance of usurious claims
Searching for massive galaxies at z>=3.5 in GOODS-North
We constrain the space density and properties of massive galaxy candidates at
redshifts of z>=3.5 in the GOODS-N field. By selecting sources in the
Spitzer+IRAC bands, a highly stellar mass-complete sample is
assembled,including massive galaxies which are very faint in the
optical/near-IR bands that would be missed by samples selected at shorter
wavelengths. The z>=3.5 sample was selected down to 23 mag at 4.5 micron using
photometric redshifts that have been obtained by fitting the galaxies SEDs at
optical, near-IR and IRAC bands. We also require that the brightest band in
which candidates are detected is the IRAC 8 micron band in order to ensure that
the near-IR 1.6 micron (rest-frame) peak is falling in or beyond this band. We
found 53 z>=3.5 candidates, with masses in the range of M~10^10-10^11M_sun. At
least ~81% of these galaxies are missed by traditional Lyman Break selection
methods based on UV light. Spitzer+MIPS emission is detected for 60% of the
sample of z>=3.5 galaxy candidates. Although in some cases this might suggest a
residual contamination from lower redshift star-forming galaxies or AGN, 37% of
these objects are also detected in the sub-mm/mm bands in recent SCUBA,AzTEC
and MAMBO surveys, and have properties fully consistent with vigorous starburst
galaxies at z>=3.5. The comoving number density of galaxies with stellar masses
>= 5x10^10M_sun(a reasonable stellar mass completeness limit for our sample) is
2.6x10^-5Mpc^-3 (using the volume within 3.5<z<5), and the corresponding
stellar mass density is ~2.9x10^6M_sunMpc^-3, or~3% of the local density above
the same stellar mass limit.For the sub-sample of MIPS-undetected galaxies,we
find a number density of ~0.97x10^-5Mpc^-3 and a stellar mass density of
~1.15x10^6M_sun Mpc^-3.[abridged]Comment: Accepted by A&A; 35 pages, 15 figures, references update