Tag: student loans

Barack Obama sics Federal Marshals on student loan defaulters.

You know how young voters kept expecting Barack Obama to do something about student loans.  Well, guess what! He did something.

Congressman Gene Green says the federal government is now using private debt collectors to go after those who owe student loans.

Green says as a result, those attorneys and debt collectors are getting judgements in federal court and asking judges to use the US Marshals Service to arrest those who have failed to pay their federal student loans.

Hey, ‘sending out the Man’ qualifies as ‘something.’  It may not be the ‘something’ that these kids were expecting, but that’s not really Barack Obama’s fault, is it?

Moe Lane

PS: Pause for a moment. Pretend, just pretend, that there is a kid reading this who has realized to his shock and dismay that he’s been messed over by this administration, and he’s on the cusp of having a revelation about how he should be acting and voting. He’s reading the comments section right now. His entire future is collapsing to two possible critical life paths.

Now ask yourself: What is my victory condition, here? Heck, what’s Moe’s? – Well, I’ll tell you what my victory condition is: one more refugee pulled from the icy seas. I’m here to do that until the party decides it doesn’t want my help anymore, probably.

I *do* feel bad for people with horribly crushing student loan debt.

But that’s because I don’t like to blame people for falling for a lie:

…while some people say these 18-year-old kids don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, let’s not pretend we don’t know better. I distinctly remember asking my friend how he would pay off the roughly $70,000 debt he would incur to obtain a major in Ancient Greek and Latin at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. His answer? A simple shrug and flippant “It’s not something I have to worry about right now — hopefully they’ll be forgiven by the government.” Now that he’s still waiting tables four years after graduation, I’d say it’s well past time to start worrying.

Bolding mine: contra the article (which is otherwise fine, if a touch schadenfreude-y) there’s a reason why college students perennially think that their insane student loan debts are going to be forgiven.  It’s because the Democrats campaign on the subject.  Note: ‘campaign.’  They don’t ever actually do anything about it, because any meaningful way of doing so* would tick off the universities, which are frankly more reliable long-term allies of the Democrats and thus highly valuable to that party.  Your average 18 year old college freshman, on the other hand?  Well, there’s an excellent chance that within ten years he or she will be voting Republican; the ROI on helping out that class of person is thus downright awful. But Democrats can’t just come out and say that, because in the short term the Democrats need the votes.  So… the dance goes on. Continue reading I *do* feel bad for people with horribly crushing student loan debt.

Why the Democrats are about to HAMMER young people on student loan rates.

You’d think that the Democrats would be capable of basic constituency services.  But apparently not:

Senate Democrats battled among themselves over student loans Thursday, holding dueling news conferences about the right way to prevent interest rates from doubling in four days.

It was an unusual situation for the party with an issue on which it has typically been united. And the split all but guaranteed that the chamber will blow past the July 1 deadline, when new student loan applicants who receive need-based federal aid will see their interest rates rise from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.

Basically, the mess here is due to a combination of ham-handed incompetence and a basic petty inability to compromise*. To drastically over-simplify: the President wanted a deal on student loan rates;  Senate Republicans are happy to oblige the President, given that Obama is willing to give away a bit, for a change (and the alternative is the House Republican plan, which both Obama and the Senate hate); Senate Democrats got their noses out of joint on the subject; and now they’re yelling at each other and having dueling press conferences and generally doing what Washington, DC does best.  Which is to say, nothing – but nothing is being done in a dynamic and very earnest manner that assures people that Issues Are Being Addressed**. Continue reading Why the Democrats are about to HAMMER young people on student loan rates.

“Student loans are like herpes with compound interest.”

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. Continue reading “Student loans are like herpes with compound interest.”

The NYT would like you to be upset for student loan holders, not upset AT student loan grantors.

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… Continue reading The NYT would like you to be upset for student loan holders, not upset AT student loan grantors.

#rsrh Shorter Wall Street Journal on Student Loan Bubble…

…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.

#rsrh Barack Obama’s Student Loan ‘tax farmers.’

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. Continue reading #rsrh Barack Obama’s Student Loan ‘tax farmers.’

#rsrh Dick Durbin actually does something useful.

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.