Wall Street-Inflated Student Debt Bubble Hits $1 Trillion; Debtors Rally for Relief

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/155133/wall_street-inflated_student_debt_bubble_hits_%241_trillion%3B_debtors_rally_for_relief/

The collective weight of American student debt is now over $1 trillion, and that weight is a drag not just on those paying the debt, but on our entire economy. It's hard to calculate exactly, because the lenders are notoriously unwilling to hand over their data, and with students defaulting at ever-higher rates, interest rates and fees are always changing, adding constantly to the weight of the burden college graduates (and those who didn't graduate but still have to pay off the loans they took out in more hopeful times) carry.

Around the country, activists are marking the date with actions; in New York, a rally and march will be the centerpiece of what the Occupy Student Debt Campaign has dubbed 1-T day; the day the amount of debt we're carrying to pay for our education officially got too big to bear silently. The rallies aim to end the isolation that debtors often feel, to bring people together to understand that the problem they have is shared by millions of others—and that it calls for political solutions.

“I think that we in America have become so separated from one another, partially due to this debt,” Pam Brown, an organizer with the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, told AlterNet. “The debt makes us very individual; we can't afford to help someone else, we can't afford to spend our time in a way that's not productive.”

How did we get here, with more student debt than credit card debt, with student loans rising twice as fast as mortgage debt at the height of the housing bubble? Recent graduates face terrifying unemployment numbers—ThinkProgress reported that over half of all college grads under the age of 25 are either jobless or underemployed and median wages for grads with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000—and delinquencies on debt is steadily climbing.

[limpyhobbler]

1. Bail out student debtors to save the economy.

Forgive all education debt now. This would be roughly the same size as one of the big bank bailouts like tarp or whatever, except the money would just be flowing back in the other direction, back from the banks to regular people, aka the 99%. We are too big to fail, but we are very debt leveraged and could use some assistance. And free education for all.*









*Within reason. Offer excludes business majors with a concentration in finance.