Student Loans

The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened. The trick is to not measure those metrics; what isn't measured doesn't exist, especially recession.

What are the consequences of a central bank creating trillions of dollars for speculation and a central state borrowing trillions of dollars on a permanent basis? As noted before, risk cannot be extinguished, it can only be offloaded onto someone else or masked for a short time. The consequences of this sleight-of-hand (the Fed creates money to buy Federal bonds so the government can borrow and blow trillions of dollars) are not yet visible, but there will be consequences at some point; the risks have only been temporarily cloaked.Borrowing and printing $10 trillion hasn't fixed anything; it has only raised the reservoir of risk to the top of the dam. Cracks are opening as the pressure builds, and we should not be surprised when risk and consequence reconnect and the dam gives way.

On the heels of President Obama’s signing of a measure keeping federally subsidized student loans at a relatively low rate through 2015, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi exposes how the high price of U.S. college tuition and the federal expansion of student debt to pay for it pose a major threat to the economy. In his new article, Taibbi writes: "The dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal - the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008." As Democracy Now notes, during the following interview with Taibbi, "...throw off the mystery and what you’ll uncover is a shameful and oppressive outrage that for years now has been systematically perpetrated against a generation of young adults." The federal government is poised to make $185 billion over the next 10 years on student loans, with no way out for the young borrowers: "Even gamblers can declare bankruptcy, but kids who enter into student loans will never, ever be able to get out of this debt."

Harping on about rhapsodious aspirations and opportunity knocks at the door of the youthful unemployed of Europe. 

Freshly-minuted MBAs "are willing to sleep on a couch for a year or two, but they can't do it with the burden of student loans," is how on senior lecturer describes the entrepreneurial-spirit-sucking debt loads that college-leavers face in the new normal. Faced with mounting monthly payments, the WSJ reports that would-be-Bezos have little choice but to look for the steady paychecks that accompany a regular job. Recent surveys find that "the single largest inhibitor to entrepreneurship is the student loan" burden and it seems states are beginning to realize this growth-inhibiting reality. In order to tamp down ambition-busters such as "I would be a serial entrepreneur if it weren't for my student loans," California (and Rhode Island) are enacting legislation to reduce college costs and looking at the feasibility of temporary forbearance. While some see their student-loans as a motivator, it seems many more are forced down a different path due to the "real responsibilities."

Of the 28 million Americans with federal student loans, 60%, or 17 million, don't pay the US government a single cent!

As municipal bankruptcies become the New Normal, it's worth noting that litigation does not generate more wealth to distribute, it simply burns existing wealth, leaving less to distribute. Yes, this is stating the obvious, but what's obvious is precisely what's ignored when fantasy attempts to trump reality. Every constituency in every municipal bankruptcy believes they're the most deserving, and they believe that litigation will reveal the obvious truth of their claim. Unfortunately for those counting on the Grand Federal Bailout, the queue at the Federal bailout window is already long: $100+ billion bailout of FHA, which issued hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages to unqualified buyers; $100+ billion in uncollectible student loans owned or guaranteed by Federal agencies, and of course the $1+ trillion annual deficits needed just to fill the massive feeding troughs of the Status Quo.

With parent income and savings dwindling, grants and scholarships (and student loans) are making up a greater and greater share of the budget for the typical family paying for college.

Detroit will be followed by many cities, and this was not hard to see coming, not at all - as exemplified by the ample warnings given not just by me but by at least one other pundit who was derided for her candidness.

• Bernanke Seeks to Divorce QE Tapering From Interest Rates (BBG)
• China launches crackdown on pharmaceutical sector (Reuters)
• Barclays, Traders Fined $487.9 Million by U.S. Regulator (BBG) - or a few days profit
• Barclays to fight $453 million power fine in U.S. court (Reuters)
• When an IPO fails, raise money privately: Ally Said to Weigh Raising $1 Billion to Pass Fed Stress Tests (BBG)
• Bank of England signals retreat from quantitative easing (FT) ... Let's refresh on this headline in 6 months, shall we.
• Russia's Putin puts U.S. ties above Snowden (Reuters)
• Smartphone Upgrades Slow as 'Wow' Factor Fades (WSJ)
• Snowden could leave Moscow airport in next few days (FT)
• New Egypt government may promote welfare, not economic reform (Reuters)

When every indicator of stress is screaming 'bubble' in the student loan debacle, it would make perfect sense for the government to ignore it and maintain the status quo. As the WSJ reports, the never-ending federal effort to "make college affordable" simply provides the resources to sustain higher prices - especially as an increasing amount of the rising subsidies are pocketed by universities. This policy disaster which results in rising costs, taxpayer losses and over-strapped borrowers is now manifest. So naturally this week Senate liberals will bring to the floor a plan to ensure that the policy continues unchanged (and the CBO-estimated $95 billion losses) - and dismisses a coalition plan that ties student loan rates to 10Y Treasuries, providing some marginal encouragement to students to decide whether their chosen course of study is worth the money.

If judging a state's intellectual capacity can be quantified by the percentage of the population with higher education (or the street smarts to garner student loans... to gain a degree of course because anything else would be illegal), then the District of Columbia ranks as the 'smartest' while Mississippi and West Virginia rank as the 'dumbest'. Perhaps most notable is that 52% of US Graduates are either employed with jobs that don't require a degree or are unemployed.

One of the main reasons the entire debt-fueled house of cards propping the western financial system, hasn't collapsed in a smouldering heap so far - a development that has stumped all those who think of the Reinhart-Rogoff sovereign debt matrix as one dimensinal with only debt/GDP as the key variable and completely ignoring the interest rate (manipulated or not) - is that the cash interest payment on the global mountain of debt has been rather tame, courtesy of all developed world central banks going all in with serial, or increasingly more, parallel monetization of debt. However, while the US Treasury has the benefit of the Federal Reserve (and its Primary Dealer tentacles) as a backstopped buyer of all the debt that's fit to print, individual Americans are not as lucky. And as America's massively overindebted student body may be about to find out, there is no surer way to burst a debt bubble than to send its rates soaring. Because unless Congress pulls off a miracle in the next 24 hours and passes legislation that delays an inevitable doubling of rates on the most popular Federal (subsidized) Stafford loans, the interest is set to double from 3.4% to 6.8%.

Since January, under pressure from the Fed, the Education Department has flagged 126,000 applicants attempting to pocket federal loans and grants without any intent of going to school. As the WSJ reports, officials are cracking down on fraud in student-aid programs after evidence of recipients - acting alone or as part of organized crime rings - misusing funds. "What we find are very poor students academically that are borrowing to the max, getting the maximum in their Pell grant and just going from school to school," noted one director of financial aid, with roughly $829 million in Pell grants as "improper payments," in the last year. Rather stunningly, more than 34,000 participants in crime rings improperly received federal student aid last year, up 82% from 2009. "We started seeing student borrowing that was just over the top with no explanation for why," another director noted, adding "it's not so much about the education, it's the money." Most federal student aid requires no credit check and comes with few restrictions on how the money is spent and Federal officials say the Internet has helped fuel student aid fraud.

Claiming that enough time had surely passed since they last caused a global economic meltdown, top executives from the U.S. financial sector told reporters Monday that they are just about ready to completely destroy the world again. Representatives from all major banking and investment institutions cited recent increases in consumer spending, rebounding home prices, and a stabilizing unemployment rate as confirmation that the time had once again come to inflict another round of catastrophic financial losses on individuals and businesses worldwide.  “It’s been about five or six years since we last crippled every major market on the planet, so it seems like the time is right for us to get back out there and start ruining the lives of billions of people again,” said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. “We gave it some time and let everyone get a little comfortable, and now we’re looking to get back on the old horse, shatter some consumer confidence, and flat-out kill any optimism for a stable global economy for years to come.”