Utopia Talk / Politics / Government To Take Over All Student Loan

Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 21 07:00:18 If this goes through, how long before the government dictates what you can and cannot study in college? Government to take over all student loans (Rep. Michele Bachmann) By Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) - 09/17/09 10:58 AM ET Another month, and another attempt by the Obama Administration to take over a successful portion of the private sector. Banks, cars, and now student loans. I'm beginning to see a trend here. Today, the House will complete consideration of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009, otherwise known as the public option for higher education (not to be confused with the public option for health care -- but the similarties can't be overlooked). Advocates like the President maintain that if passed, this bill will bring a "level playing field" between government and private options. Sound familiar? However, history tells us that when it's all said and done, the only one left standing on the "level" playing field tends to be the government. Ending private sector competition in the student loan industry and making the Direct Loan program the sole provider will kill jobs, and greatly expand the control of the federal government. The Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) program has been the overwhelming choice for student and parents for the past 40 years. In fact, 78% of all new federal student loans from 2007-2008 were administered through this program. Yet, the government wants to end it. It doesn't make any sense. If nothing else, this bill tells us one thing -- if the government can't succeed on its own merits, they'll eliminate the competition. That should concern us all. http://the...chele-bachmann?page=1#comments
Camaban Moderator	Mon Sep 21 07:26:33 Here, we've only got (automatically-granted-as-long-as-you're-a-citizen-with-a-tax-file-number) govt student loans that get repaid when we start earning... I think it's 40k AUD a year. Private ones don't exist. It's an awesome system.
Camaban Moderator	Mon Sep 21 07:26:53 Well, private ones might exist. But I've yet to come across anyone who cares about them.
roland Member	Mon Sep 21 07:28:52 ^ Unrepentant dirty red socialist commie terrorist!!!
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 07:30:40 The entire civilised world does except for the USA. In fact, we actually feel sorry for you guys for having such a backwards, exclusive education system. Poor guys.
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 07:31:47 But just you keep fighting the fight against anything that would make life better for the average joe...
Jeddediah Wilkins Member	Mon Sep 21 07:37:09 That might explain why the finest universities in the world are all in the US.
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 07:47:32 Yeah, but not for the average joe...he gets to go to creationist college...but the US is indeed a fine place for wealthy elitists.
CrownRoyal Member	Mon Sep 21 07:50:06 "Ending private sector competition in the student loan " I am not an expert on USA student loans, but how did that "competition" work? Banks took taxpayers money, loaned it to students, got government to guarantee that loans are paid back and then pocketed the profits? It was always a "government program", what will change is that the subsidies to banks will end. " The federal government would end its four-decade practice of subsidizing private lenders that make college loans under a bill the House took up Wednesday that would steer tens of billions of dollars in savings to student aid over the next decade. ... Currently, the federal government supports college lending in two major ways. Under the Federal Family Education Loan Program, which dates to the 1960s-era Great Society, it subsidizes banks and other entities that lend students money at favorable rates, and it guarantees lenders against loss if students default. Under the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, launched in the early 1990s, the government itself is the lender. " http://www...009/09/16/AR2009091603001.html LOL @ "Government takeover". Dumb twat.
Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 21 08:05:22 How much of the bank subsidies will be offset by a new bureaucracy to run the program, and how much more inefficient will that be?
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 08:08:03 Rofl, btw Jeddediah, in checking up on the ranking lists at one of the main rankers, I came across their rather more candid opinion on your constituency: A course on â??the most powerful determinant of human destinyâ?? strikes a nerve with the American media. Jon Marcus reports The smartest course to take at Los Angelesâ?? Occidental College this semester may be Critical Theory and Social Justice 180. The subject? Stupidity. In an age of anti-intellectualism, embodied by everything from George W. Bushâ??s presidency to Beavis and Butt-Head, the class at the university that Barack Obama attended for two years quickly reached its maximum enrolment of 35, and has a waiting list, too. In its consideration of stupidity, the course covers the work of philosophers such as Avital Ronell (author of Stupidity), novelists including John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), social commentators such as the documentary-film-maker and writer Michael Moore (Stupid White Men), and popular culture (the movies Idiocracy, Jackass and Dude, Whereâ??s My Car?). It describes stupidity as â??the most powerful determinant of human destinyâ??. The course leader, Glenn A. Elmer Griffin, called it â??unpoliticalâ?? in the paradoxical sense that Massimo Cacciari, the Italian philosopher and politician, uses the term. â??We attempt a rigorous critique of what passes for political reason in the US. We try to understand the force of stupidity â?? elective non-comprehension â?? in shaping the terms of this discourse,â?? Professor Griffin said. But he added that while stupidity is â??a topic as old as philosophy itselfâ??, it is also â??current, in the sense that there have been something like 40 books written on this topic in the past decade, and a fair number of them have been concerned with anti-intellectualism in Americaâ??. Examples of the serious consideration the topic has received include Richard Hofstadterâ??s classic 1960s text Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and, more recently, Susan Jacobyâ??s The Age of American Unreason. It is not necessarily the case that people are becoming more stupid, Professor Griffin said, notwithstanding, he added, the incompetence evidenced in the national response to Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war, the wilful ignorance that led to the global economic crisis, celebrity magazines and reality TV. Instead, Professor Griffin likens the rising awareness of stupidity to the increasing consciousness of autism. It is not that there is more of it; it is just that there are more ways to discern it. â??With the application of critical and postmodernist theory â?? most notably in the extraordinary work of Avital Ronell â?? we are in a position to identify stupidity in its more varied, dynamic and pervasive forms,â?? he said. The reception to the course seems to prove Professor Griffinâ??s point. A blogger criticised the course description for its â??hyper-deconstructionist languageâ?? â?? essentially, for using too many big words â?? and the post was rebroadcast by countless other blogs and picked up by comedians on radio and television. The criticism has left many at the small liberal-arts university of about 1,900 students reluctant to talk to the press. Jonathan Veitch, Occidentalâ??s president, has defended the course publicly, but Donna Maeda, chair of the critical theory and social justice department that runs it, declined to discuss the situation (although Professor Griffin said she had been supportive). Professor Griffin, a member of the Occidental faculty for 20 years and three-time winner of its distinguished teaching award, has also refused to be interviewed by the American media. However, at least one of the students in the class has defended it, albeit anonymously, online. The course, the student said, â??changed the way I think completely. It opened my mind to new perspectives and challenged my thought process. It is the best class I have ever taken, even as it challenged me to the point of frustration.â?? And while others who commented suggested that a course in stupidity was an implicit liberal attack by Democrats on Republicans, the student said that politics â??can never be removed from a class, whether it is biology or history. But this professor refused to reveal his political bias, and I found it hard to determine the way he leaned. This class addresses politics, but it is not meant to be any sort of political brainwashing.â?? Of course, Americans are not the only ones who act stupidly, said Professor Griffin, who was raised on St Croix in the US Virgin Islands and went to school in Trinidad. â??No one who has been to England or felt its presence in a former colony can imagine that America has a corner on stupidity,â?? he said. http://www...oncode=26&storycode=408274&c=2
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 08:08:47 * Rofl, btw Jeddediah, in checking up on the ranking lists of Universities
Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 21 08:13:37 The Country would be better served if they were to scrap this program and devote that class time to Thomas Paine's 'COMMON SENSE.'
CrownRoyal Member	Mon Sep 21 08:38:55 http://www...CommunityProposalMillerLtr.pdf "How much of the bank subsidies will be offset by a new bureaucracy to run the program, and how much more inefficient will that be? " Net savings of $67 billion over the next decade, according to CBO.
roland Member	Mon Sep 21 08:42:51 How dare the commies trying to reduce government spending!
Hot Rod Member	Mon Sep 21 08:57:23 I'll accept the CBO estimate, but I am curious what the costs they were asked to ignore would add up to. Though I do find it hard to believe that a student loan program covering tens of millions of students can be administered for only about $700 Million per year if that includes the fees paid to their "designated private lenders?" One thing that really concerns me though is, "the Community Proposal would permit new loans to be originated by federally designated private lenders and then transferred to the federal government..." Will they call that *Funny Mac.*
Turtle Crawler Admin	Mon Sep 21 09:19:33 Here is the skinny, These loans used to work by private loan companies making them and selling them to investors with government insurance. Then the government legislated the rate too low for private investors to be willing to buy them, so the government started buying the loans. Now the government wants to make the loans directly to students. The main downside of this is the government has to issue $100B of new bonds every year to finance the loans. It will also end up issuing the bonds at higher interest rates than it is loaning them out - Almost a certainty when you count in the costs of collection. Right now you can negotiate public student loans only to the extent that they tack on fees for collectors and such, because only the principle and interest is federally guaranteed. Who knows how that might change.. This could get worse for borrowers or better. Student loans work great, IF everything goes right, you graduate, you get a job in the field you trained for, you make decent money. If you don't get to use your degree or worse yet do not finish college, student loans can be one of the worst things that can happen to you - because they are none bankruptable. For this reasons, I think that the entire system of federal student loans should be removed. If they were bankruptable then you would see FAR more bankrupsies because of these than health care.
jergul Member	Mon Sep 21 09:39:28 "The main downside of this is the government has to issue $100B of new bonds every year to finance the loans. It will also end up issuing the bonds at higher interest rates than it is loaning them out" Nah, not when you have a system where the treasury issues money to buy government debts and the USD functions as a reserve currency and international trade recycling tool. And if that status ends, you have much bigger things to worry about than optimal lending strategies financing education.
jergul Member	Mon Sep 21 09:57:11 http://www...s/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html Careful for what you wish for. You might get it.
Isaksson Member	Mon Sep 21 10:05:05 Roflamao, americas big brother = sweden. You are turning into what sweden has been since the 60ties? ROFL!
Turtle Crawler Admin	Mon Sep 21 10:53:42 jergul, That is economic nonsense that the US government would not be able to finance its deficit if it were not a reserve currency. As I explained to you in another thread, if the demand for the dollar declines due to a lack of need for it as a reserve currency, then they will simply have to issue US bonds to remove the excess currency from circulation. The amount of money that they are able to buy dept with is the amount they have issued, which is M0. The current value for m0 is as best I can tell, about 1 trillion dollars. Even if every penny of currency that you are worried a out were completely removed from circulation it would only add 1 trillion to the national debt. This would increase debt from 7.5T to 8.5T, and as I mentioned first thing, the ability to borrow money is a function of the ability to pay, not of reserve currency status.
Barack Hussein Obama Member	Mon Sep 21 11:04:26 Of the top 10 universities in the world all but 3 are American. Of the top 50 all but 11. Europe is supposedly so much smarter but virtually every major applied technological innovation of the last 25 years occurred in the US and not in Europe. If it had we'd all be using minitels and flying on concords.
Aeros Member	Mon Sep 21 11:14:03 This will hardly effect the Private Universities. Keep in mind those schools make money from their endowments and alumni more then they do from simple tuition fees. And Students who NEED a loan to go to College to begin with will not go to a Private Institution anyway. And as some folks already said, this is just going to cut out the middle man so the Government can work directly with the Student rather then through a bank. Government administrative overhead is far, far lower then it is in the Private Sector, believe it or not.
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 11:14:50 "Yeah, but not for the average joe...he gets to go to creationist college...but the US is indeed a fine place for wealthy elitists. "
Ninja Member	Mon Sep 21 11:27:38 "The main downside of this is the government has to issue $100B of new bonds every year to finance the loans. It will also end up issuing the bonds at higher interest rates than it is loaning them out - Almost a certainty when you count in the costs of collection." And how the hell did they finance the loans to the banks before?
Ninja Member	Mon Sep 21 11:28:00 P.S. "If this goes through, how long before the government dictates what you can and cannot study in college?" NEVER. God you're an idiot.
World Citizen Member	Mon Sep 21 11:33:21 It is indeed quite startling.
jergul Member	Mon Sep 21 11:47:26 TC Well, empirically, the US is currently printing currency to buy its own debt issues. Ignoring currency surrogates (electronic dollars for example. Treasury issues in themselves also currency surrogates) then yah EMZero is about 1 trillion dollars. You did not explain it to me - that would be like teaching your father to fornicate :-). I did not see that post anyway. Reserve currency + role as international recycling trade tool of choice + currency issues to buy federal debt were the 3 factors to worry about and the 3 factors that keep treasury rates lower than they would otherwise would have been. Meaning your thesis that federal debt is more expensive then private debt would generally be wrong. Among the reasons is of course the overnight lending rate always being higher than the short term federal rate. Meaning that generally, the Federal government has a huge margin to play with if it wants to break even or make money off student loans. Policy makers may choose to subsidize students of course, but that is not required. http://stu...rivate-student-loan-today.html http://www.salliemae.com/get_student_loan/apply_student_loan/interest_rates_fees/interest_fed.htm =========== Sum of two links: "That is another reason why private student loans should only be used as a LAST RESORT, after all federal grant and loan options (Stafford, PLUS) have been exhausted first."
Isaksson Member	Mon Sep 21 12:05:11 Roflmao, america is looking on sweden as thier model for ruining a society!
Turtle Crawler Admin	Mon Sep 21 12:19:37 Jergul, my thesis is that the government is losing money when they buy these loans as they issue them at lower rates than they borrow at. I know that this is true because otherwise they would be able to sell these loans to private investors like they had been doing previously. 1-2 years ago the federal government started buying student loans: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122610749897110375.html Now it mentions the credit freeze, but other federally backed bonds are still selling just fine, like ginnie mays, so the remaining issue is the interest rate. Private student loans are of course at a higher rate because they are not federally backed and they are bankruptable. You are absolutely right about 90% of your post, except that treasury rates are lower than they otherwise would have been. I don't have any evidence to justify that. Two currencies that follow the same monetary policy and thus have a fixed exchange rate will have identical bond rates. From that starting point you can defeat the argument that bond rates have to do with being a reserve currency.
Ninja Member	Mon Sep 21 12:22:40 TC: "The main downside of this is the government has to issue $100B of new bonds every year to finance the loans. It will also end up issuing the bonds at higher interest rates than it is loaning them out - Almost a certainty when you count in the costs of collection." And how the hell did they finance the loans to the banks before?
PhunkyPhishStyle Member	Mon Sep 21 12:23:58 If you can't afford a good college education, what exactly is wrong with working hard in school to get scholarships?
jergul Member	Mon Sep 21 13:03:44 Was a bit misleading TC. By rates I meant auction results of treasury issues. It is clear that the measures mentioned keep accepted bids lower than otherwise would be the case I trust. Reserve currency is a bit complex. On the one hand recycled USD without that status would become interest-bearing to a point (used to by treasury issues), on the other, it increases inflationary pressures. Impacting on the value and increasing borrowing needs over time in nominal terms.
Camaban Moderator	Mon Sep 21 18:27:42 >>If you can't afford a good college education, what exactly is wrong with working hard in school to get scholarships? << It relies a bit on luck, plus you'll have plenty of students who only flourish when they get into the real world and get a job. When I get my degree, it'll be the first thing I've passed since Kindergarten. (I got into uni based on my work experience) (Failed school, dropped out halfway through 11th grade, failed Tafe (Kicked arse in networking subjects, but failed the programming subjects they felt the need to impose on us miserably) worked for a few years and now doing quite well. If I'd been relying on a scholarship earnt in school, well........ I wouldn't be 9 months away from a bachelor's degree right now.
Camaban Moderator	Mon Sep 21 18:28:31 Sorry, work experience plus I scored in the top 10 percentile on the admissions test.
Forwyn Member	Mon Sep 21 21:23:19 Repubs fucked over the student loan process under Bush. I can get housing loans, car loans, and 10 credit cards, and declare bankruptcy or die, and everything is solvent. But no, I try to be fucking responsible and go to school, and the loans will follow me through bankruptcy, they'll follow my kids if I die, and they're twice as hard to get. At least if I'm an irresponsible jackhole and finance a 50k car and die, my family can keep it. But my education, which dies with me, still carries a price tag that my family benefits nothing from. Yeah, government interference meant to "stabilize" the student loan sector. Fuck them.
camaban Moderator	Mon Sep 21 23:40:32 Well, this one doesn't. In fact, seeing as I only repay it once I'm earning more than $40k per year in Australia, if I leave I don't pay anything back.
Hot Rod Member	Tue Sep 22 07:46:53 Ninja - "If this goes through, how long before the government dictates what you can and cannot study in college?" NEVER. God you're an idiot. The USSR did it. Just where the hell do you think Obama is taking us?
steven Member	Tue Sep 22 07:50:31 Ninja - "If this goes through, how long before the government dictates what you can and cannot study in college?" NEVER. God you're an idiot. The ENTIRE WESTERN WORLD that has this didn't do it. Just where the hell do you think Beck is taking you you retarded fucking moron? LOL
Camaban Moderator	Tue Sep 22 09:12:33 >>The USSR did it. Just where the hell do you think Obama is taking us?<< The USSR was all-controlling anyway. Your cause and effect is mixed up. Seriously, check out HECS (I think it's called HELP now, but HECS is far easier to search for obvious reasons) For dealing with student loans it's a brilliant scheme. The paperwork also couldn't have been much simpler. Could also be done online (with the automation that implies)
jergul Member	Tue Sep 22 09:33:02 The USSR did not tell you what to study.
Turtle Crawler Admin	Tue Sep 22 11:45:47 Ninja, the government did not provide the money for the loans before. Private companies issued and funded the loans, the federal government just guaranteed it.
CrownRoyal Member	Tue Sep 22 11:51:29 "Under the Federal Family Education Loan Program, which dates to the 1960s-era Great Society, it (govt) subsidizes banks and other entities that lend students money at favorable rates, and it guarantees lenders against loss if students default.Under the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, launched in the early 1990s, the government itself is the lender. " http://www...009/09/16/AR2009091603001.html
Rugian66723 Member	Sun Feb 05 00:23:43 pattern him test animal thought better while ?
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