Ben Bernanke came out with a statement yesterday that student loans won’t cause a crisis. Bernanke, of course, is a great judge of crises, considering his statements from 2005-2007 that housing was fine and the bubble was manageable. I particularly enjoyed his statement that “The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession” in January [...]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has delivered a report to the Senate Banking Committee on the rise of the private student loan industry. This industry took a hit after 2010, when the Affordable Care Act included a provision that ended the practice of private banks administering student loans guaranteed by the government, and just had [...]

In my story on California’s budget woes, I mentioned a study showing that more qualified high school graduates are choosing not to attend college because they are priced out of the market for higher education. I should add that the ones who do choose to matriculate end up with a pile of debt after the [...]

If nothing is done in Congress by the end of June, interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford student loans will double, from 3.4% to 6.8%. The general public, in particular students, have only now become aware to this looming time bomb that would raise financial obligations by thousands of dollars over the life of the [...]

In a rare moment of disagreement among major federal agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found in its preliminary research of student debt that the problem is even greater than they at first surmised. A speech before the Consumer Bankers Association by Rohit Chopra, the student loan ombudsman for the agency, termed the student [...]

In discussing Warren Buffett’s claim that housing will come back simply due to structural factors (he calls it “hormones”), Matt Stoller makes the point that the significant drop in household formation is a new phenomenon. Only three years since 1947 have shown a negative household formation, and they include three of the past four years [...]

Paul Krugman today patiently explains that short-term accumulations of federal debt simply do not create the disastrous effects claimed by those who want to prevent any progressive economic policymaking. Perhaps most obviously, the economic “experts” on whom much of Congress relies have been repeatedly, utterly wrong about the short-run effects of budget deficits. People who [...]

Today a NY Times story, Spend or Scrimp? Two Sides in White House Debate, Not since the first years of the Clinton administration has a White House had to debate whether to give precedence to stimulating the economy or reducing budget deficits. After the Reagan years there a massive deficit and debt had built up, [...]