Debt

CBO: Government Annual Student Loan Profit $12 Billion

April 15, 2014 Shahien Nasiripour, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Debt, Education

The U.S. Department of Education is forecast to generate $127 billion in profit over the next decade from lending to college students and their families, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Beginning in the 2015-16 academic year, students and their families are forecast to pay more to borrow from the department than they did prior to last summer’s new student loan law, which set student loan interest rates based on the U.S. government's costs to borrow. The higher costs for borrowers would arrive at least a year sooner than previously predicted. James Kvaal, a top White House official, last year dismissed the possibility that student borrowers would pay higher costs under the new law. The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau on Monday warned borrowers about a "jump" in rates. The projection, made public Monday by the nonpartisan budget scorekeepers, provides the federal government’s best estimate of how much the government's student loan program will cost taxpayers.

New Shock Doctrine: ‘Doing Business’ With The World Bank

April 6, 2014 Jason Hickel, www.ajazeera.com Educate! Debt, Food and Agriculture, IMF, World Bank

In 2003 the World Bank published the first Doing Business Report, which ranks the world's countries based on the "ease of doing business" in them. For the most part, the fewer regulations a country has, the higher they score. The report has become the Bank's most influential publication, and the ranking system is recognised as a powerful tool for compelling countries to initiate regulatory reforms, driving a quarter of the 2,100 policy changes recorded since it was launched. Investors and CEOs use the rankings to decide where to move their money or headquarter their businesses for maximum profit. There's even a handy iPhone app that jet-setting capitalists can use to redirect their investments on the fly. A new minimum wage law was just passed in Haiti? Better move your sweatshop to Cambodia! Higher taxes on the rich in Sweden? Time to shift accounts to Kenya's new tax haven!

The Myth Of Working Your Way Through College

April 5, 2014 Svati Kirsten Narula, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Debt, Education

A lot of Internet ink has been spilled over how lazy and entitled Millennials are, but when it comes to paying for a college education, work ethic isn't the limiting factor. The economic cards are stacked such that today’s average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his courses—a feat that would require superhuman endurance, or maybe a time machine. To take a close look at the tuition history of almost any institution of higher education in America is to confront an unfair reality: Each year’s crop of college seniors paid a little bit more than the class that graduated before. The tuition crunch never fails to provide new fodder for ongoing analysis of the myths and realities of The American Dream.

IMF Demands For Austerity Make Debt-Based Economy Worse

April 3, 2014 Eurodad, www.eurodad.org Educate! Debt, IMF

Loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) largely come with policy change conditions attached – conditions that the IMF has played a significant role in developing. Criticisms of the excessive burden and politically sensitive nature of these conditions led to significant reviews at the IMF and the introduction of some conditionality-free facilities, although these are limited in scope. The IMF claims to have limited its conditions to critical reforms agreed by recipient governments. However, the worrying findings of this research suggest that the IMF is going backwards – increasing the number of structural conditions that mandate policy changes per loan, and remaining heavily engaged in highly sensitive and political policy areas.

New! Debt Resisters Operations Manual

April 2, 2014 Strike Debt, www.strikedebt.org Strategize! Debt, Poverty, Strike Debt

The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual (DROM) seeks to provide widely applicable yet detailed information about debt as well as strategies for resistance. It highlights our commonalities—namely, that people are not alone in their struggles against debt—as well as our different relationships to debt. We strive to analyze debt from many different angles, always maintaining a nuanced, critical analysis that is conscious of race, gender, class, sexuality, age, ability, and their intersections. We strive to write in simple language and will work to translate the manual into languages other than English. A 120-page pamphlet version of the manual was collectively researched and written in August 2012 as a contribution to strengthening and expanding the debt resistance movement.

Jubilee USA Files to Supreme Court in Landmark Debt Case

March 24, 2014 Staff, www.jubileeusa.org Educate! Debt, Poverty, Strike Debt

The Supreme Court would likely decide by the summer whether or not it will actually hear the case. In a separate case currently before the Supreme Court, Argentina sought review of a lower court decision allowing NML Capital to target assets outside of Argentina. The United States filed an amicus brief in support of Argentina, arguing that Argentina's assets are immune from seizure under federal sovereign immunity law. These cases go back to 2001, when Argentina defaulted on roughly $81 billion in debt. Multiple hedge funds purchased debt for pennies on the dollar. These hedge funds are called "vulture" funds because they prey on countries in financial distress and target assets that benefit poor populations.

Fix The Debt’s $40 Million Austerity Advocacy Fails

February 24, 2014 Mary Bottari www.prwatch.org Resist! Austerity, Debt

Bernie Sanders hit the roof, taking to the floor to denounce Blankfein for what he called his unbelievable arrogance, given the role the big banks played in collapsing the economy and skyrocketing the deficit. Days later, protesters descended upon a Fix the Debt event for the first time, chanting loudly and rattling a senior presenter from the Heritage Foundation. Burke Stansbury from the Campaign for Community Change took a punch from the Heritage hysteric, and the throwdown was on. Dozens of small groups jumped into the fray – including Social Security Works, Institute for Policy Studies, Campaign for America’s Future, Public Accountability Initiative, and more – pulling back the curtain on the tax cutting agenda of the group and its leadership council, which was riddled with undisclosed conflicts of interest.

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