When it rains, it pours
So much to cover, and so little time lately! Let's dive right in:
- The GSU Signal writes about student loan issues, and the article, in addition to mentioning the obvious idea that the "kind of anti-competitive practice" allowed in the student loan industry "would not be allowed in most business situations," also references the Wire article in which my own situation is mentioned.
- More than one book (and I've not yet read any of them) is out or coming out soon about the debt burden of post-college age Americans, including Strapped:Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead by Tamara Draut, and Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young by Anya Kamenetz (Anya, an oft-linked Village Voice columnist here on GenerationDebt, also has a blog, and is the author of Robbing Joe College to Pay Sallie Mae, a recent New York Times Op-Ed column.)
- Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris weighs in on the student loan issue at the New Albany Tribune and Jeffersonville Evening News, stating, "Many students are locked into rates that approach 9 or 10 percent, reminders of the grim economic days of the early 1980s, and find themselves with no flexibility. Frequently, students use their once-only refinancing option shortly after graduation and find themselves helpless as the market interest rates drop ever lower. ... Student loans are the shackles that most young people take into the rest of their lives after leaving school. Keeping this debt hangover large and rendering it inflexible is about as anti- family a policy as you can get, forcing young people to postpone starting families because of the load of debt with which they begin life burdened."
- Many articles have come out recently analyzing the Congressional drive to cut student loans, in light of the large debt burden that many graduates carry for years after they are out of college, including articles at Alternet, the South Florida Sun-Sentinal, and Bloomberg.
- And finally, the recent Lockhart decision of the United States Supreme Court, ruling that the federal government can seize part of a person's monthly Social Security check to pay off outstanding student loans, has been the subject of student loan buzz, even prompting a little satire over at TPM Cafe.
That's all, folks, at least for the moment. We're still working out some site glitches, and I'll be back in legislation analysis mode come January, when I imagine many of the bills concerning issues of student loan consolidation will be reintroduced in the 110th Congress.
Have a wonderful holiday season, all.