Debt Assignment

Get Shorty (IMDB the movie if you don't know it) became a popular-ish comedy series on EPIX. Based on the Elmore Leonard novel, Chris O’Dowd plays Miles Daly, ex Mob enforcer turned movie producer. The original movie version starred John Travolta, whose character of Chili Palmer was more in line with the original book: Palmer was a loan shark collector for the Mob, who preferred to use humor and threats but was not above physical violence to achieve his goals. Yes, a subtle difference. Loan sharks often have numerous defaulting loans such that they need to group them together and hand them off to someone else to collect on their behalf for a cut of the proceeds.

In the financial world, credit card companies often group their defaulting debts and assign them to a third party, usually a debt collection agency with baseball bats, who will make its money from whatever portion of the debt they can collect if not the entire amount due plus interest. Plus fees. Plus fingers. The assignment allows the original creditor to write off the bad debts against taxes while the third party agency makes it its business to harass the debtors with both genuine and fictitious threats in order to intimidate them into remittance.

If you owe, rename your title from Get Shorty to Get Liquid. Fast.