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America's Student Loan Racket: Soaring Default Rates - by Stephen Lendman
An earlier article discussed Permanent Debt Bondage from America's Student Loan Racket," accessed through the following link:
It explained government/corporate complicity to rip off students for profit, a racket continuing under Obama. His July 2010 Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act perpetuated the scam. It enriches providers, entrapping millions of students permanently in debt, because rising tuition and fee amounts plus interest, service charges, and late payment or collection agency penalties are too onerous to repay.
It's part of the grand scheme, of course, to transfer maximum public wealth to America's super-rich already with too much. Ongoing for over three decades, it accelerated under Obama, a corrupted Wall Street/war profiteer tool, destroying America for power and profit.
Millions of Students Permanently Entrapped in Debt
Many students, whether or not they graduate, have debt burdens approaching or exceeding $100,000. If repaid over 30 years, it's a $500,000 obligation, and if default, much more because debts aren't forgiven. As a result, once entrapped, escape is impossible. Bondage is permanent, and future lives and careers are impaired or ruined.
Congress ended bankruptcy protections, refinancing rights, statutes of limitations, truth in lending requirements, fair debt collection ones, and state usury laws when applied to federally guaranteed student loans. As a result, lenders may freely garnish wages, income tax refunds, earned income tax credits, as well as Social Security and disability income to assure defaulted loan payments. In addition, defaulting may cause loss of professional licenses, making repayment even harder or impossible.
Moreover, under a congressionally established default loan fee system, holders may keep 20% of all payments before any portion is applied to principle and interest due. A borrower's only recourse is to request an onerous and expensive "loan rehabilitation" procedure, requiring extended payments (not applied to principle or interest), then arrange a new loan for which additional fees are incurred.
As a result, for many, permanent debt bondage is assured. In addition, no appeals process allows determinations of default challenges under a process letting lenders rip off borrowers, many in perpetuity.
At issue is a conspiratorial alliance of lenders, guarantors, servicers, and collection companies enriching themselves hugely at borrowers' expense, thriving from extortionist fees and related schemes. It's a congressionally sanctioned racket, scamming millions of indebted victims.
Moreover, lenders thrive on bad debts, deriving income from inflated service charges and collection fees. They're more than ever today as default rates soar, lifetime rates now nearly one-third of undergraduate loans, higher than for subprime mortgages. In fact, they're higher than for any other lending instrument and rising.
Soaring Defaults During Hard Times
Since America's economic crisis began in late 2007, an April 21, 2009 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Anne Marie Chaker article highlighted the burden on students headlined, "Student Loans: Default Rates are Soaring," saying:
The combination of economic weakness, rising tuitions and poor job prospects caused defaults on student loans to skyrocket. According to Department of Education numbers for those federally guaranteed, estimated FY 2007 default rates reached 6.9%, up from 4.6% two years earlier.
Conditions are now far worse according to a February 4, 2011 Mary Pilon and Melissa Korn WSJ article headlined, "Student-Loan Default Rates Worsen," saying:
