There is a debt problem

Yves Smith writes:

So bad economic times increase income disparity even among the young, and that will also make it even harder for them to contend with debt.

I’ll return to this topic, because I think this recitation isn’t adequate to convey how the pieces are being put in place to put bigger and bigger swathes of the public under the debt yoke. And officials act as if this sort of thing is desirable as long as they can pretend it’s “affordable”. This cheery statement comes from that Department of Education release:

“The growing number of students who have defaulted on their federal student loans is troubling,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “The Department will continue to work with institutions and borrowers to ensure that student debt is affordable. We remain committed to building a shared partnership with states, local governments, institutions, and students—as well as the business, labor, and philanthropic leaders—to improve college affordability for millions of students and families.”

This is completely nonsense unless the Department is working to lower tuition costs on a widespread basis, and I see no evidence of that. All we have is yet another “transparency” initiative, to treat college, like Obamacare, as a shopping experience. While one part of the push is to provide “bigger grants” and “more affordably loans” to “better” colleges, this means they get more tuition dollars. This does nothing to address the underlying cause of price inflation and gold plated administrators.

This is a slow road to penury for young adults, save for those who manage to get on the really big ticket career paths or have parents who can pay for college and buy them a house. We can’t pretend to address the problems of the economy unless we include the increasing debt enslavement of the young along with the pauperization of the old. Otherwise, the Petersons and the Druckenmillers of the world will play them off against each other and keep them both under their boot.