Moe Lane

Glenn Reynolds thinks that this Daily Show skit on our current student loan crisis will help collapse the (related) current educational bubble:

I agree, but I want to address another point. (more…)

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

It has been six years since Ms. Fitzgerald — broke, unemployed and in default on the $18,000 in loans she took out for Jenni’s college education — became a boomerang mom, moving into her daughter’s townhouse apartment in Hingham, Mass.

[snip]

“It’s not easy,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. “Jenni feels the guilt and I feel the burden.”

Actually… (more…)

How does the student loan collection industry break down when it comes to political donations? In terms of relative contributions to Democrats and Republicans, that is.

…when it pops, it’s going to end up with the federal government holding the NON DIS-CHARGEABLE BY BANKRUPTCY loan papers on several micro-generations of students – definitely to the tune of over 400 billion, very likely to that of 500 billion, and very possibly even higher.  This will not topple the government, but a bunch of voters are about to discover that what Uncle Sam giveth, Uncle Sam can taketh away… and that Uncle Sam is a lot more hard-nosed about the latter than the former.

Via @iowahawk.

• Q. “Should student loans be priced differently according to major?” (see here and here for more)
• A. Yes.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

The fish rots from the head down.

For the benefit of my readers who have had public school educations – and thus probably only have a rudimentary grasp of European history – tax farming was a practice from the Roman empire where the state licensed out the right to collect regional taxes to private individuals and groups, told said groups what they had to kick back every year, and then left the tax farmers to acquire the money somehow.  If you’re wondering what then stopped the tax farmers from gouging their victims, wrecking long-term financial structures, and/or generally making life miserable, let me answer that: absolutely nothing.  Which is one reason why you’re reading this missive in a language influenced by Latin, but not descended from it.

Not that things are nearly that bad in this country.  Unless, of course, you have a student loan that you can’t pay.  Then you’re fodder for the administration’s privatized student loan debt collectors – who will hound you to a fare-thee-well, complete with a total disinclination to give you any idea about how to get them off of your back.  Because they actually aren’t from the government, and they’re certainly not there to help. (more…)

He’s pushing for a bill that would allow college students to discharge their student loan debts via bankruptcy.

Yes, I know, our entire financial system will take a hit when that happens.  I’m not the guy who made the debts not removable by bankruptcy in the first place, and I’m definitely not any of the people who jacked up tuition prices so badly, either.  It’s a crisis that’s not going away, and if there’s a better way to solve the problem of the tuition student loan bubble that won’t involve copious amounts of pain, I’m all ears.

And mind you: I paid mine off.

Via Instapundit.

They’re too damn high and brutally hard to get rid of, on the average; and they’re largely that way because the colleges don’t actually have any skin in the game.  I think that it was Glenn Reynolds who suggested that one answer would be to allow student loans to be discharged by bankruptcy again – and to put the schools that facilitated the debt on the hook for ten percent of the liability.  Even if that’s just going forward (IANAL, but I think doing otherwise runs you into ex post facto territory), you’d still be amazed at how fast colleges get spiraling costs under control.

See?  I’m not totally heartless.  Or, at least, I can direct my heartlessness at Big Academia, which is frankly in need for a little laudable public humiliation and shaming.

This thought just popped into my head as I was responding to an email, and I thought that I’d share it further. Because I’m just a helpful guy that way.  Anyway, here was my suggestion:

Let’s combine a new CCC program with a student loan forgiveness deal: twice minimum wage, but every dime above minimum gets deducted automatically and goes to pay off your student loan principal. I’m sure that we’ve got some potholes that need patching, and getting to watch a twenty-four year old semiotics major visibly realize that it’s all come to this will justify the cost right there.

Discuss.  I can see a couple of potential problems, myself, but understand: this is only one-third, at best, about any sort of economic ‘stimulus*.’  The actual goal here is to take as many members the 23-45 year old ‘over-educated idiot’ demographic of the population as possible and violently rip them out of their insulating – and smothering – cocoon from the real world.

Think of it as… shock therapy.

Moe Lane

*Although frankly if we’re going to throw money away anyway we might as well throw it away at student loans, which need drastic reforms.

No.  Seriously.

[UPDATE: Folks, it looks like they just updated the story and changed the URL.  Here you go with the new one.]

Apparently, there was this woman who had skipped out on her student loans, so the feds sent a SWAT team to her house to deliver a search warrant.  That is to say, the SWAT team stormed the house, broke down the door, handcuffed her husband, and stuck around for six hours until it finally was successfully pointed out that not only was the woman not there; she had in point of fact skipped out on her family, too. [UPDATE: The government is now claiming that the Education/SWAT raid wasn't due to student loan defaults; which doesn't actually resolve any of the questions below.]

Now, you’re probably asking yourself the following questions:

• Since when did the Department of Education get to do what sounds awfully like no-knock raids? Answer: I’m not sure.  Perhaps this question should be presented to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Democrat), who is of course appointed by President Barack Obama (Democrat).
• Since when does a search warrant for student loan defaults [UPDATE: or fraud, really] permit the same tactics that one would use to secure a crystal meth lab that has a sideline in illegal automatic weapons? Answer: there is no way that I can match the righteously outraged fury of Reason.com on this one, and I will not even try.
• Wasn’t there some kind of student loan relief program signed into law?  Answer: HAHAHA!  No.  The closest thing to that is that students in the future who paid their loans all along will get forgiven the balance five years early – which means, in twenty years instead of twenty-five.  Yup, I know that the President promised otherwise.  The President makes a lot of promises that he doesn’t keep.  He lies a lot, too*.
• Should I be paying off my student loans, then?  Answer: YES.  Or else the SWAT teams may come for you.  And, presumably, shoot you if you freak out about it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Hey, I didn’t vote for him.