The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

[cjppjc]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/[/url]

The worst kind of human behavior. Befriending someone in order to give false hope and take advantage of them.

[don]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

The worst kind of human behavior. Befriending someone in order to give false hope and take advantage of them.

FIRE Sales

[Starving Steve]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

Gold coins give me no pain. Silver dollars give me no pain. Cash in the bank gives me no pain. My i-bonds from the Federal Reserve Bank give me no pain. Beaver bucks with kids tobogganing in winter (on Canada's $5 bill) give me no pain. My dividend streams from the energy industry give me no pain. And if I need hope, I have my oil sand trusts in northern Alberta.............. My college degrees give me NOTHING. When I think of the years I wasted in college and what I could have otherwise done with my time in the 1960s--- when silver coin was everywhere around, I just get so mad at myself. Even in the 1990s, I could have been buying oil-sands trusts, but I was wasting my time with a teaching credential. Same mistake: a waste of productive years in a short lifetime.

Oil is going to $100+ per barrel. Solar energy is a complete failure. Wind power is another joke, except in Wyoming. Nuclear power is the future, as it always was. Dividends compound. Green and gold are king. Time is money...... What else is there to know?

[cjppjc]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

FIRE Sales

I don't think it's that simple. People are consciously and unconsciously minipulating people all the time. In this instance it is disgusting. I get ahead while you fall behind. Hey maybe you're right. FIRE Sales.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

FIRE Sales

In the graphic I posted, you have to ask yourself "Why did the events in 1978, 1990 and 1998 take place?" "Why did people ask for these laws?"

As noted, less than 1% of the loan volume was discharged through bankruptcy. Not a high percentage. So why?

I believe that it is the "Man bites dog" syndrome that is responsible for this -- laws passed in response to events that were actually quite inconsequential -- but lead to totally unforeseen outcomes.

[BigBagel]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

"...Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.

In College, Inc., correspondent Martin Smith investigates the promise and explosive growth of the for-profit higher education industry. Through interviews with school executives, government officials, admissions counselors, former students and industry observers, this film explores the tension between the industry --which says it's helping an underserved student population obtain a quality education and marketable job skills -- and critics who charge the for-profits with churning out worthless degrees that leave students with a mountain of debt.

At the center of it all stands a vulnerable population of potential students, often working adults eager for a university degree to move up the career ladder. FRONTLINE talks to a former staffer at a California-based for-profit university who says she was under pressure to sign up growing numbers of new students. "I didn't realize just how many students we were expected to recruit," says the former enrollment counselor. "They used to tell us, you know, 'Dig deep. Get to their pain. Get to what's bothering them. So, that way, you can convince them that a college degree is going to solve all their problems.'"

Graduates of another for-profit school -- a college nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now sinking in over $200,000 in student debt..."

PBS Frontline program; http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...llegeinc/view/

This Frontline report should be required viewing for anyone even remotely thinking of going to one of these for profit schools. It is exactly the same scam as the sub prime mortgage industry. Exactly, with the taxpayers once again holding the bag.

[oddlots]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

We should cut government down to size. These guys are leading the way:



BB I think you need to be more precise.

This is a great thread and what it describes to me is a "private-public partnership"... on the dark side.

Where you see socialism I see looting of public treasuries by private interests. And what has enabled this looting? The belief that "gubmint" can do nothing right.

Think about this: what good can come of this constant denigration of public service? Where is the upside? It certainly ensures that those most likely to exploit the system feel no qualms about doing so. The evidence of Fannie and Sallie are proof positive.

PS: the picture is the infamous taking a chainsaw to banking regulations:

In the summer of 2003, leaders of the four federal agencies that oversee the banking industry gathered to highlight the Bush administration's commitment to reducing regulation. They posed for photographers behind a stack of papers wrapped in red tape. The others held garden shears. Gilleran, who succeeded Seidman as OTS director in late 2001, hefted a chain saw.
The other men in the picture were identified by CalculatedRisk: John Reich (then Vice Chairman of the FDIC and later at the OTS), James McLaughlin of the American Bankers Association, Harry Doherty of America's Community Bankers, and Ken Guenther of the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Yet we all still need teachers, firemen etc. to keep the public fabric from tearing apart. If we have no model of public service as a touchstone how are judges to remain independent?

Honestly, as an outsider to American politics, the public=bad / private=good seems like the biggest burden the country faces. Especially given the fact that there's no credible way to re-float the system, given the massive private-sector-led credit bubble and bust, but to put the full faith and GDP of the nation behind some credible, productivity increasing leap forward.

The only thing worse than a public sector employee is a CEO at the teat of FIRE sector profits.

[Rajiv]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

We should cut government down to size. These guys are leading the way:

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[don]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

I don't think it's that simple. People are consciously and unconsciously minipulating people all the time. In this instance it is disgusting. I get ahead while you fall behind. Hey maybe you're right. FIRE Sales.

When someone is sold a rigged mortgage, loan, pension plan, insurance policy or other FIRE product, by an agent who professes to represent their interests, it's not unconscious. A friend of mine, in desperation, is going from the production (unemployable at present) economy to the FIRE. He's being drilled into how to hook his clients, know their pressure points, etc. until I assume he will perform these techniques unconsciously.

[cjppjc]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

When someone is sold a rigged mortgage, loan, pension plan, insurance policy or other FIRE product, by an agent who professes to represent their interests, it's not unconscious. A friend of mine, in desperation, is going from the production (unemployable at present) economy to the FIRE. He's being drilled into how to hook his clients, know their pressure points, etc. until I assume he will perform these techniques unconsciously.

I was only pointing out how all of us in one way or another manipulate others. Consciously or unconsciously. The above is of course awful.

[don]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

I was only pointing out how all of us in one way or another manipulate others. Consciously or unconsciously. The above is of course awful.

I think as the depression drags on it's dragging me a bit down, Jersey. No offense intended.

[cjppjc]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

I think as the depression drags on it's dragging me a bit down, Jersey. No offense intended.

I hear that loud and clear. A good observation.

[santafe2]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

In the graphic I posted, you have to ask yourself "Why did the events in 1978, 1990 and 1998 take place?" "Why did people ask for these laws?"

In the US people don't ask for laws, corporations ask for laws and pay to have them passed. Parents who are paying attention do not allow their children to date in their early teens, do not allow their children to drink and drive and do not allow their children to take out student loans. We live in a preditory society. The weak are eaten and tossed away. It's not getting better so I'd suggest we teach our children to save. Debtors of all strips a simply preditory food supply.

[Bruno T]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

Poor babies. Attend college for 4 years (which takes a smart person about 25 hours a week to do when others are working 50 hours a week), never work, just live on loans. Then bankrupt if you don't make enough to pay them.

Govn't participation in this is a mess. But that doesn't mean the debtors are some kind of victims. Allowing them to discharge these debts would just mean that A) nobody gets student loans, even the responsible people, (or at least rates would skyrocket), and B) they would borrow even more lavishly if they could, and C) the govn't, ultimately backing these bad debts, would just print more money or tax us more to pay for it. D) the price of college would rise even higher as more money is pushed into it.

I went to college and borrowed $0. Poor babies. They might have to actually work for 5 years and save for an education, work while in school, or dare I say pick a career they're more suited for. Because if you can't figure out that borrowing $80,000 for college to get a degree where you don't make a lot means you can't pay it back, you need to consider another line of work.

Meanwhile welders, machinists, mechanics, etc are in high demand. Baby boomers raised a generation of darlings that would die before they get their hands dirty. Nations like this either sit on oceans of oil or they decline and fall.

[flintlock]

Re: The Gateway Drug to Debt Slavery

My neighbor, who has a good job, was pursuing an MBA through one of those schools. He was told an MBA was his key to advancement. Only midway through he found out one of those rinky dink degrees would be considered worthless as far as his company was concerned. He quit immediately, a bit poorer for the experience. You'd think he would have done a bit more homework first.

Good point Rajiv on the "Man bites dog" syndrome. Our law books are full of those type of laws, where a tiny minority commit infractions, and the rest of us have our freedoms taken away in the name of "fixing" things.

Santa Fe nailed it with the fact that Corporations decide which laws get passed for the most part.