The Average 25-Year Old's Debt Has Grown 91% in the Last Decade -- Will Borrowers Learn to Push Back

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/1-percent-holds-student-loan-debtors-moral-turpitude




Back in September, the U.S. Department Education announced its two-year and three-year federal student loan default rates. The rates were 10 percent and 14.7 percent respectively, both record highs. At the time the report was released, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called these numbers “troubling.”

NYU professor of social and cultural analysis and Occupy activist Andrew Ross would likely call these figures extortionist. Also, not at all unexpected.

“Creditors have their foot on the throat of the global economy,” said Ross on a panel last month at The Brecht Forum in New York. The panel—which included writers, professors, and activists—was there to discuss debt resistance, and Ross’s new book Creditocracy And The Case For Debt Refusal. Resisting one’s debts is a tactic rarely if ever discussed by the American media’s talking heads. Ross’s book humanizes the cryptic problem of a society funded on credit, offering a political voice to those whose economic power has been throttled.

Ross digs into the injustice of the main kinds of American debt—medical, municipal, student, and housing—but his biggest ax to grind is with student loans, a contract that so easily binds teenagers and their cosigners to decades of indebtedness to the banks. Students across the nation are being turned into what credit financiers call “revolvers”, the most desirable customer out there, the kind that month after month pays off their interest without making a dent in their principal balance (those that are able to pay this off as well are termed “deadbeats”).

[Adrahil]

1. K&R... Extremely important issue. NT

[marmar]

2. k/r

[xchrom]

3. i hope you have a wonderful Spring, marmar!

[marmar]

4. You too mr. xchrom......

...... I just hope it takes hold soon. It's been a hard winter here in the Great Lakes region.

How have you been? I've been so busy with these work conferences and training sessions that I feel very out of touch with my DU people.

[xchrom]

5. winter has been dark, dreary, severe by turns.

except for unforeseen events -- my life is pretty staid and quiet.

i hope busy means a good thing for you.

it's good to see here -- and some of us do notice when you are absent.