No Country For Young Men (Or Women)
Just today I was confronted with the most insane set of diametrically opposed facts I've seen in a long time. ZH showed the student loan delinquency rate now hitting a new record. A full $120 billion of student loans are in default and yet the post-graduate unemployment rate is 13% and a staggering 30% for those without degrees. Bearing in mind that only about 1/3 of people attain a bachelor's degree. So young people now face a Faustian bargain of lifelong debt servitude and somewhat improved potential for a (low paying) job, or terminal unemployment. Meanwhile, what is the only type of debt in the U.S. that can't be discharged via bankruptcy? Student loans. Yes, the overwhelmingly corrupt powers-that-be have decided that Wall Street and major corporations can accumulate massive debts to be used for speculation and *special* dividends and discharge them via bankruptcy, but not so student loans.
And as the article states, the unemployment rate for post 55 year-olds has never been lower, so as long as they are fat and happy, it's all good. And if you can imagine on this very day when student loan delinquencies hit a new record, the House of Representatives passed a bill (which has yet to pass the Senate and Obama), that ties student loan interest rates to the market and therefore will allow interest rates to rise to who knows what level above the currently fixed 3.4% today. There is no way to accurately predict interest rates, but suffice to say, the current 3.4% would be the floor and the ceiling according to the bill would be 8.5% - almost triple. Suffice to say, this new proposed policy won't just ignore the student loan crisis, but make it far worse. By contrast during 2008 when banks got themselves in trouble due to their own self-inflicted chicanery, Congressional lawmakers passed TARP to authorize $700 billion to bail out the banks.
Now Eating the Seed Corn
But apparently, the current fixed interest rate system for student loans is costing taxpayers $9 billion a year which is "too much". Let's see, a $9 billion investment in youth education which is the entire future of the country and the economy, is deemed too much. To put this in perspective, $9 billion is a mere 1.3% of the Defense budget, 1% of Medicare and 1% of Social Security. The difference? Those latter three programs are all for the geriatric Faux Newstards and in no way benefit the youth of the country. These geriatric morons are too dumb to realize that without young people in the economy, there won't be Social Security, Medicare or Defense, so there is no point in trying to protect those programs in their totality at the expense of the seed corn of the economy.
Free Money For Wall Street - 8% for Students
Here is by far the most egregious aspect of this entire fiasco, that the lamestream media didn't even pick up on. For four years straight, the Fed has had a zero interest rate policy, meaning gamblers and speculators on Wall Street and large banks can borrow for free and invest in any asset of choice making a mathematically infinite profit. Which is how the banks dug themselves out of 2008 i.e. with all time record high profits. So apparently, fixing interest rates to the floor for Wall Street banksters is okey fucking dokey for House Republicans, but God forbid if an unemployed college graduate - already struggling to make ends meet, pays "only" 3.4%. Interest rates need to be tied to the market for college grads, but can be manipulated into oblivion for Wall Street.
Unbelievable. Shocking. Shameful. Disgusting. Sickening.
The point of recognition has already occurred, except this society was too dumb to recognize it...
This society is like a 400 pound fat man that can't get out of his own way; caught in an ever-tightening noose of bad decisions, one leading to the next. Unbeknownst to the Idiocracy at large, it's all already collapsing, as the clock runs out on the illusion-formerly-known-as-the-economy. By ignoring and obfuscating all of the problems for this long, they've saved the best for last - a final violent implosion that comes seemingly out of nowhere.
Free Money For Wall Street - 8% for Students
Here is by far the most egregious aspect of this entire fiasco, that the lamestream media didn't even pick up on. For four years straight, the Fed has had a zero interest rate policy, meaning gamblers and speculators on Wall Street and large banks can borrow for free and invest in any asset of choice making a mathematically infinite profit. Which is how the banks dug themselves out of 2008 i.e. with all time record high profits. So apparently, fixing interest rates to the floor for Wall Street banksters is okey fucking dokey for House Republicans, but God forbid if an unemployed college graduate - already struggling to make ends meet, pays "only" 3.4%. Interest rates need to be tied to the market for college grads, but can be manipulated into oblivion for Wall Street.
Unbelievable. Shocking. Shameful. Disgusting. Sickening.
The point of recognition has already occurred, except this society was too dumb to recognize it...
This society is like a 400 pound fat man that can't get out of his own way; caught in an ever-tightening noose of bad decisions, one leading to the next. Unbeknownst to the Idiocracy at large, it's all already collapsing, as the clock runs out on the illusion-formerly-known-as-the-economy. By ignoring and obfuscating all of the problems for this long, they've saved the best for last - a final violent implosion that comes seemingly out of nowhere.
