Dr. Evil's Payday

2 Sep 2009 // Early one morning in late April, as the Today Show broadcast live from Rockefeller Center, a group of onlookers gave Matt Lauer a T-shirt emblazoned with the Web address Econ4U.org. "Scored a T-shirt here from these folks promoting economic literacy, which is really nice," the good-natured anchor said, displaying the shirt to nearly 6 million viewers. Little did Lauer know, but he'd been duped into providing that free advertising for a group that promotes payday lending—an industry long accused of preying on low-income Americans with short-term loans carrying huge interest rates.