Congress could

have avoided

debacle if it cared

This graph from the Fed speaks volumes about the extent of the student loan bubble … and the trend is ever skywards. Click image to enlarge.

MILLIONS OF THOSE WITH student loans are in for a nasty surprise today – thanks to our  dysfunctional Congress.
Today is the day that student loan interest rates increase dramatically.
It need not have happened.
If the Senate and House had approved the bill by freshman Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), it would have alleviated the problem way back when she first introduced it in May.
Instead, those dolts did nothing.
It just goes to show how dysfunctional Congress really is. How much worse can it get?

VIDEO BELOW THE FOLD

MEET THE WIZARD BEHIND THIS WEB SITE
Martin Black, 22, is a Ph.D. student at the British Antarctic Survey, with a grant to spend the next Southern Hemisphere summer (January and February 2014) doing research in the Antarctic.
He is also a genius at CSS code with which he built this website, “In the (K)now” in about a week in early May.
He is an already accomplished young man who is, clearly, going a long way.
We had lunch together June 3 at the Eagle tavern in Cambridge, U.K. surrounded by doctoral students celebrating the end of their work on their theses.

In a statement from the White House released just moments ago, President Obama has made it clear that the Republican-introduced bill on student loan interest rates under debate in the house, is unacceptable.
“If the President were presented with this legislation in its current form, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill,” says the Statement of Administration Policy that just landed in my inbox from the Executive Office of the President.
Thank you President Obama. Take that John Boehner.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has done well by the over 100 community colleges in the state with his revised budget released earlier this month, in which he proposed increasing the community college system budget by more than 50 percent from his January plan.
The reason: improving state revenue and a brighter budget outlook.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced on May 8 that her first bill introduced would be the Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, which would dramatically – although temporarily – lower the interest rate for many students starting July 1.

The student debt bubble is a growing tragedy of remarkable proportions. An entire generation, it seems, is being hobbled for life (student debt is not dischargeable under current bankruptcy laws) and the entire economy is being dragged down as a result.