If you don't believe Texas government can work in mysterious ways, look at the evolution of payday lending, which I stumbled onto seven years ago while looking into predatory lending practices.

At the time, only about 150 payday lenders were offering quick cash without credit checks in Texas to those with a job and a checking account. The legality of those loans was questionable, because the Texas Constitution long has limited interest rates to 10 percent, with exceptions for pawn and unsecured signature loans.

But payday lenders insisted that instead of lending money, they were extending cash advances and taking signed personal checks in the amount of the advance and a "handling fee" from the customer.

In reality, cash-strapped Texans were borrowing money for very short periods at triple-digit interest rates and leaving worthless checks as collateral. Unable to repay the notes, they would roll them over — often, more than once — each time increasing their debt for fear of facing hot-check charges.

When banks from states with no usury limits started partnering with payday lenders — because federal regulations allowed them to export their usurious rates to Texas — the number of locations spread like the plague.

The Texas Finance Commission finally "regulated" payday loans, limiting fees and banning police from collecting on the borrowers' bad checks. But in the process, payday lending was legalized.

Now that there are 1,500 payday loan stores in Texas, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is changing its regulations to limit the number of payday loans a bank can make through one payday lender and to restrict the number of loans a borrower can take out.

But Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Van, tried to come to the payday lenders' rescue by filing House Bill 846, which would have permitted payday lenders to charge 391 percent interest — almost four times the 114 percent now allowed if no out-of-state bank is involved.

Along the way, a substitute for his bill was adopted, and it seemed to be sailing through the Texas House with the help of the payday lenders' significant political clout.

But then it ran into Rep. Trey Martínez Fischer, D-San Antonio, who makes no secret of hating payday lending because it victimizes the poor. Seeing that the bill seemed headed for passage, Fischer says he asked to negotiate and wound up talking to the author and a payday lender's lobbyist. They rejected all of the limits Fischer suggested to make payday loans less onerous.

"I tried to negotiate, but (the lobbyist) took an all-or-nothing approach," Fischer says. Then he found some serious omissions in the bill's analysis.

"By law, they are supposed to have a comparison that shows how the substitute is different from the original bill, and they didn't," Fischer says. "So I raised a point of order, and it was upheld."

As a result, the bill was pulled. Because it is so late in the session, Fischer effectively killed HB 846, at least for now. But he is watching closely because it is possible that some of its key provisions will be added to another bill.

Still, the bill's demise sent ripples through Wall Street, where stocks of four of the nation's biggest payday lenders — Texas-based EZCorp, Ace Cash Express, First Cash Financial Services and Cash America — declined precipitously. Overnight, the four lost almost $92 million in value.

"Maybe now they know how it feels to lose money like that," Fischer muses. "But I'm sure they can get payday loans themselves."