Some time ago, a woman wrote a letter to The New York Times, explaining how her life had been pretty much ruined by a loan shark.

She had borrowed $50 when her daughter was sick and had to pay three consecutive monthly payments of $22. It began a cycle where she wound up broke and then foolishly went to another loan shark. She eventually lost her job (the loan shark went to her boss when she couldn't make a payment), and finally began working at a new place of employment for a very small salary and naturally couldn't pay the loan sharks she owed money to. She ended her letter by noting that "the blood-suckers are hounding me to death."

She signed her letter, "Helpless."

The year was 1908. One hundred years ago.

Today, that same letter could easily be written, only with the words "payday lending store" in place of "loan shark." That said, a payday lending company may telephone a home relentlessly, trying to get their money back and then some. They may sue a person in court. They may help make life miserable for some people, decimate their credit score, send them into bankruptcy and financially ruin them for years to come, but at least they can't legally send someone to appear in your doorway and threaten your health, or stalk your boss.

Borrowing money with interest rates you can't afford is still a poor idea -- pun intended -- but at least predatory lending offers a safer option out there than loan sharks.

Payday lending stores started to swell in the early 1980s when many banks, angling for better profits, moved out of poorer neighborhoods. That's when the industry truly started to come into its own. It also didn't help when, in 1979, laws were loosened governing interest rates on loans. Before 1979, every state loan capped how high an interest rate could go.

Arguably, the predatory loan industry can evolve even more beyond not breaking people's legs -- much, much more. On the other hand, with 13 states having banned or virtually eliminated the payday loan practice, and many others looking like it may, one has to wonder if this path is just going to take us back where we started. Sure, plenty of people abuse the system, but I half wonder if this will just encourage anxious, occasionally-cash-strapped citizens who feel helpless to someday do something they never dreamed of doing -- like meeting a loan shark in a dark alley.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

In the last year, there has been a lot of movement afoot in state governments to either quash payday lending establishments or at least force them to bring down their interest rates. Here's a quick snapshot of how things are going -- or not going.

California: Earlier this month, just as legislators were going to vote on a bill that would have forced payday loan stores to cap their annual interest at 36%, they pulled back. That would have effectively meant that for every $100 a consumer borrowed, he would only have to pay back that $100 plus $1.60 within a two week period.

Oregon: Last July, a 36% annual cap was put on the payday lending industry, and 80% of the stores closed up and went out of business.

Illinois: In 2005, the state put forth many regulations for payday loans under 120 days. So lenders stopped issuing short-term loans and went for loans longer than 120, meaning their customers wind up paying more and going into more debt.

Ohio: They're currently trying to pass House Bill 333, which would do what California was trying to do.

Georgia: Since 2004, payday lending has been a felony. North Carolina has also banned the practice. All in all, there are 13 states in America that have banned or virtually wiped out the industry in their own states: Oregon, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia. They're also illegal in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

And our neighbors to the north? Just as the payday loan stores are popping up everywhere in Canada, partially due to the influx of Americans going north to get cash, many provinces like Ontario are looking into legislation to regulate the industry.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Admitting that I took out a payday lending loan isn't exactly something I'm proud of. I imagine it ranks down there with confessing to friends that you took your sister to the prom.

But since I'm admitting I became a payday loan customer earlier this year, I thought I'd give everyone a sense of what to expect if you find yourself in a similar situation. Hopefully what I'm about to tell you will help you know what you're in for.

How to know where to go: I'm not an expert on this, having only gone to one place, but I simply looked through an online phone book and picked out a national payday lending establishment that had a branch within a few miles of my house. I know that there are online payday lenders with no brick and mortar stores, but I know nothing about them, and I figured if I was going to wade into the sleaze, let's make it the most reputable, nationally-known sleaze possible.

What you need to bring: Well, photo ID for starters. I'd call ahead first and ask, since every establishment is different, but chances are, you'll just need your driver's license and some recent pay stubs to show that you're gainfully employed. If you're self-employed, it's more difficult to borrow but still possible. Again, you need proof of income, quite a bit more proof than an employee with a boss and a W-2.

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

The good news about the recession is that there are bargains to be had for the adventurous shopper. The bad news is that many people are not able to afford them.

Times are tough and the economy is slowing. The National Bureau of Economic Research has not officially pronounced that the U.S. is in a recession -- technically two consecutive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product Growth. GDP rose 1.9 percent last year and is expected to decline in the first quarter by 0.1%, according to Morgan Stanley.

Yet some economists, including David Wyss of Standard & Poor's, argue that a recession is already in progress. He believes that the economy is half-way through the slowdown, which he expects to be mild as recessions go. "It's still going to hurt," he said in an interview. "Recessions always do."

Indeed, signs of a recession are all around us. People are doing without a full tank of gas. They are watching their pennies at the grocery store. They are learning to do without things that they thought, until recently, they could not do without -- including $10,000 summer camps. Many are watching their homes decrease in value at an alarming rate and foreclosures have hit records.

In WalletPop's Recession Watch series, bloggers documented some of the new trends brought about by the economic slowdown. For example, some young adults are moving in with their grandparents. Businesses of all sizes are merging to save money. Others, such as a karate dojo, are adding quirky new side businesses, such as selling balloons.

Here are some other additional signs of looming recession:

During my blogging "career", I've found myself defending the payday lending industry on more than one occasion. I don't do it because I think payday lenders are good for consumers but rather because there's a widely-held assumption that the industry is earning huge profits at the expense of consumers, which isn't the case. Looking at the financials of these companies, you can quickly see that they're really not that profitable. They make small loans and have substantial overhead. Without insanely high rates on the loans, they wouldn't be able to turn a profit. So the industry is basically a bad deal for consumers and a below-average deal for the lenders.

According to the Community Financial Services Association of America, an industry trade group, "A study by the FDIC Center for Financial Research found that "operating costs lie in the range of advance fees" [collected] and that, after subtracting fixed operating costs and "unusually high rate of default losses," payday loans "may not necessarily yield extraordinary profits. "