Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Helping Homebuyers? Ignoring us?

President Obama and your wise Administration, if you don't want to be another Hoover, I suggest you help the indentured educated class, too. Did you see that article that just came out? The one that states that student loan debt has now surpassed that of credit card debt? Yeah. It's a crisis. DO SOMETHING TO HELP US.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

He already is another Hoover. We are now paying peoples mortgages for two years. Nice. Free rent.

I guess all those crazy Obama supporters we saw during the campaign weren't all that crazy.

Anonymous said...

We're not even helping them. Obama's much-hyped HAMP program has been shown to be an utter debacle that hasn't helped anybody and has a built-in loophole that benefits (surprise, surprise) the mortgagor, not the home"owner."

So, no, nobody is being helped. And rather than further splitting the ranks of the downtrodden (as 90 percent of us are, or will be) with petty infighting, it might behoove us to all band together against the ongoing destruction of the American middle class.

Dan said...

He's a lame duck whether its warranted or not. The conservative right has usurped public opinion via the teabaggers (why are Repubs so much better at this!!!)

We need a strong leader. There is no way Obama is oblivious to what is going on in education. If he is willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of students' lives to "compromise" with politicians or improve our "macro" education stats he doesnt deserve to be re-elected.

Anonymous said...

There are several things that could be done that either would be budget-neutral or actually reduce the deficit but help borrowers. The colleges don't want any time spent on policy discussions related to "past students," i.e., existing borrowers.

Several of the ideas on this site would cost money and would require cuts elsewhere to fund them -- particularly ideas that would impact the property interests of the holders of existing loans.

Cryn Johannsen said...

Well, if policy discussions don't wish to go in that direction, then this Administration will be facing an angry group of voters. I have been under the impression, based upon research, that there are numbers that show that certain measures to help current debtors would actually benefit taxpayers. Why don't you let us know who you are, so we can have a more open conversation? You are clearly an informed person who disagrees with my posts and this site. If you'd prefer to not post here, but contact me offline (i.e., via email), please feel free. My address ccrynjohannsen@gmail.com. I'd be happy to keep our conversation confidential.

Anonymous said...

The complete lack of interest in consolidation from policymakers -- many of whom took donations from loan consolidation firms in the past and were big boosters -- is certainly frustrating, now that getting the word out to borrowers is needed more than ever.

Without consolidation firms deluging borrowers with phone calls, e-mails, pop-up ads and postal mailers, DoEd (direct loan) is the only game in town. (Starting 7/1/10, only Direct Loan can issue student, parent and consolidation federal education loans, but consolidation lenders were essentially out of the game by early in 2008 due to the international credit crisis -- their means of raising capital from investors were far more complex than traditional lenders and far more dependent on the international credit bubble. FFELP lenders that did both consols and nonconsols shifted to nonconsols during 2008.) There seems to be a big concern, in part due to what happened in 1997, that, if DoEd actually begins getting the word out to borrowers and financial news reporters that this is the best time ever to consolidate, then its systems will be overwhelmed with applications and could result in heavy backlogs and delays.