Why should they pay? How about the ones who took out the loans pay them back? How about the ones who owe rent pay their landlords? They agreed to these deals, they should hold up their end of the bargain. They need to have financial responsibility.
millions of americans will be homeless today
- Thread starter rickyb
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because they are the ones most able to pay. its detremental to a society to have these kind of debts. housing debt. student debt. what we owe to the environment. its unsustainable. its been a few months since i listened to michael hudson but i will tell u again writing off the bad debts is an absolute necessity.
students pay 7% interest on the debt to the govt which is a predatory lender and holds a monopoly on the debt. guess what interest rate wall street gets on the debt from the federal reserve
look at wwII. germany was forgiven of its debt because its socially destructive to keep such debt and that was probably something that led to hitler.
Anthony Fiorentino: Well, Ralph, we filed these lawsuits because I realized that what was
happening to me was happening to thousands of people. What happened is I tried to enroll in an
income-driven repayment plan, and because it's based on your income, you have to provide
documentation of your income, your family size, [and] number of dependents each year, once a
year, to your loan servicer. And like I said, these are private entities that get millions of dollars
from the Department of Education to service the loan. Well, what I was noticing was for three
years in a row, for some reason, my application to renew my plan was rejected for one reason or
another. Sometimes I would be told that the income documentation was insufficient even though
I followed all the instructions on the application to a T. Sometimes I would be told, you checked
this box here but this box here and those are inconsistent, so we can't accept your application. Or
sometimes the loan servicer would just delay processing the application until months after the plan
expired because it only runs for one year at a time.
And what many people don't know is, when you're kicked out of one of these income-driven
repayment plans, all of your accrued interest capitalizes. So let's say you have a student loan of
$10,000 principal and $2000 interest. What they'll do is if you don't renew the plan by the annual
deadline, you get kicked out of the plan. [Then] your monthly payments go up thousands of dollars,
and now they take the $2000 of interest and they tack it onto the principal. So now you have
$12,000 of principal balance and now you're going to pay interest on that interest for many years
to come. And this is one of the ways that the debt starts to spiral. So we had to bring these class
actions against these companies to ensure that that wouldn't happen anymore. And we found some
of our plaintiffs by working with Alan Collinge, who you know Ralph; he's featured in the Scared
to Debt documentary. It's wonderful six-part series that really gives a lot of great information on
how we got to this point. It's directed by Mike Camoin.
Yep. And fewer new housing/rental units will be built if potential landlords think they might get
ed by non-paying tenants from the get-go.the housing market is already a spectacular disaster.
Anthony Fiorentino: Well, I think it's disgraceful, Ralph. I've always agreed with the public good
theory of education. I don't think you can have a functioning citizenry unless they're educated. And
in any advanced industrialized economy, and particularly the 27 OECD countries, education is
treated as a public good. You can go to countries in Scandinavia, not only do not take out loans
while you're going to school, they pay you a stipend. They actually pay you to go to school because
school is work. Ask anybody who is pursuing a PhD or a doctorate. They'll you, it's a lot of hard
work to go to school and to excel. And so instead of taking out loans, we should be doing that. We
should be investing in people having an educated citizenry. But instead, we've created a predatory
lending system that is not about creating pathways to education; it's about enriching large for-profit
corporations and banks. And unfortunately, it's also about taxing the middle class because this
federal loan program is actually a tax. It's just called a loan, but it's a way of getting revenue for
the federal government without having to tax corporations. So you charge these interest-bearing
loans to working class people and then you don't have to tax them because you already just charged
them interest on an interest-bearing loan.
And so it is a disgraceful system and it's really predatory. I've seen . . . if you watch the
documentary, Scared to Debt which, as I said, the first installment has just come out, there is one
borrower who originally borrowed $20,000 and this was 20 years ago [yet] she has been making
payments ever since, and now she owes over $214,000. That's because the payments don't even
touch the principal. You're just paying back interest year after year, and the interest keeps
compounding and you can never get out from underneath it. I mean it's so much worse than paying
lenders.
Ralph Nader: So the US government, through its contracts and fine print outsourcing, has turned
itself into a loan shark.
Anthony Fiorentino: Well, absolutely, Ralph. When you strip away consumer protections, like
bankruptcy protections [and] like statutes of limitation on collection, you create a functionally
predatory loan system. And that's why it's now common for borrowers to pay back the amount
they borrowed plus interest without ever touching the principal balance and still keep going. Most
borrowers' payments that I've spoken to, and I've spoken to thousands, only cover the interest. And
you've got interest rates as high as 7%. And so what we have now is really a predatory lending
system that's being run by the federal government in collusion with these federal loan servicers
who are supposedly servicing the loans but in most cases they're just kicking people out of
repayment plans that they're entitled to be
Steve Skrovan: Yeah. Tony, this is fantastic. Whenever we hear about spending bills, the question
though is who is going to pay for it? How are we going to pay for it? And I went to Change.org
where there is a petition about student debt and I'm going to quote from them because I think it
makes a tremendously compelling case that answers those questions. And they say, quote,
"Trillions could be injected into the economy with no tax money needed, nothing added to the
national debt. During the pandemic, we've given $1 trillion in loans that don't need to be repaid to
small businesses, and additional trillions doled out to businesses, governments, individuals,
colleges, and others. This all required money to be drawn from the Treasury, and added to the
national debt. Cancelling $1.6 trillion in federal student loans, on the other hand, will require
nothing from the Treasury, and will add nothing to the national debt." That seems like a pretty
compelling case. Hard to argue, right?
Anthony Fiorentino: Well, not only that, Steve, but people have to remember that when the
largest banks and insurance companies committed mass securities fraud in the mid-2000s, they got
a $700 billion bailout and they had committed crimes. They had committed mass securities fraud.
Now you're talking about students who committed no crimes and they've just taken out loans that
they had to take out just to educate themselves so they're viable in a modern economy. And yet
they can't get the same kind of relief that criminal banking institutions got. And it wasn't just that
$700 billion, of course. The Federal Reserve has bought up these banks' toxic assets. Now we've
got millions of students with toxic assets, which are called student loans. How come the Federal
Reserve doesn't buy up those?
So let's make it even worse and for longer, right?
im asking u what are you defending?
which is a common problem for you because as we both know you like to settle for little to nothing
Lineandinitial
Legio patria nostra
The fact that your Marxist pie in the sky baloney doesn't work for actual people or real of estate markets regardless of the current condition of either.
If it were up to you there'd be no rent paid ever because you're a coddled Marxist baby who hasn't had an original thought or need that wasn't met by your parents in your entire life.
All you have are visions of a Marxist utopia that'll never exist because the systems you want won't work.
Sure they do. Countries are different. Geographically, demographically, politically, etc. Any one of those differences can present a country with unique advantages or disadvantages in achieving a desired goal.
Do any of the countries you're referring to run their housing systems in the way you'd want them to be run in your utopia?
Operational needs
Virescit Vulnere Virtus
Why is it that the spoiled brats who’ve had everything handed to them in their lives and never wanted for anything, are always the ones thinking that capitalism is the worst thing ever?
THEY are the ones at the protests while the working people work and take care of their responsibilities.
its usually the poor and middle class kids at protests. not the rich lol.
Poor and middle class kids need to eat too. They don't have the time or resources for that
. Whereas you and your dumb dumb friends occupy stuff because your family wealth means don't have to worry about how you'll be clothed or where your next meal will come from. You can stand around and bitch and moan about everything until the end of time as long as you've got the family credit card.u guys are so clueless. its hte poor and middle class who protest because they have the least.
Nice fantasy, comrade.
so occupy, black lives matter, trump supporters, wto protests, civil rights were mostly composed of rich people? lol
oldngray
nowhere special
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