I just found out another aspect of the FED's loan scam: One cannot refinance a Federally backed student loan. Wow, that's freaking awful. 2021 rate is only 2.75%
I just found out another aspect of the FED's loan scam: One cannot refinance a Federally backed student loan. Wow, that's freaking awful. 2021 rate is only 2.75%
Yup, I've been locked in at 4.75% on my federal student loans since 2005. I've never missed a payment, but the balance has barely dropped. The principal has gone down by about 15% over 15 years.
I'm not getting why the interest rate isn't simply indexed to the Federal prime lending rate, rather than setting up a Bureaucracy of Loan Forgiveness.
That way, college students can "take responsibility for funding their own education" without being caught in a usury trap.
Because there are multiple lenders in the market place (federal and private) - often times private lenders have significantly higher costs. By drawing attention to them, by indexing with Prime (it creates more traffic away from the more expensive loans). This is one reason. There may be more.
There's also the fact that we don't have a public national banking institution; instead, we have the Federal Reserve system which is an entity run by private individuals- regional "governors", appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate- that works as an intermediary between the US Treasury and the privately owned banks. I don't pretend to be up on the pros and cons of that situation.
I do find it worthy of note that the Federal Reserve is routinely cast by old-school American political conservatives as instrumental to a conspiratorial plot by "finance capital socialists"*, five of the seven Federal Reserve Bank Governors are Republicans (currently, there's one vacancy.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Governors
[*I could use a lot more explanatory clarification on that particular narrative.]
┬лthe Federal Reserve is routinely cast by old-school American political conservatives as instrumental to a conspiratorial plot by "finance capital socialists"*, five of the seven Federal Reserve Bank Governors are Republicans┬╗
There are several different factions of the "right", at least the "libertarians" (Ron Paul etc.), the "populists" (Buchanan, Perot, Trump, ...), the "corporatists" (McConnell etc.), the "financialists" (Romney etc.); geographically someone proposed a three-way split between yankee bankers, texas oilmen and west coast tech moguls.
The left seems to be morphing into Hollywoodists,tech moguls, and global corporatists for the most part. Of course all of this hides behind a facade of woke equality that pretends to care about the poor despite not being able to stand the smell of them.
┬лJoan Walsh, the national-affairs correspondent of The Nation, and GreenwaldтАЩs former editor at Salon, recently said that left-wing Trump-Russia skepticism contains тАЬreal disdain for what the democratic Party has become.тАЭ She went on, тАЬThat would mean its closeness to finance, and Wall Street.тАЭ┬╗
┬лa facade of woke equality that pretends to care about the poor┬╗
I think they don't that: the "whig" side story is that the poor are "losers" to which "the markets" are giving their just deserts, unless they are female, or black, or gay, in which case they are discriminated, or are white in which case they are racist, sexist, homophobic "deplorables" who doubly failed, as they are failures despite their privilege.
So...borrow at the low rate and pay off the higher rate loan? Thing is, who are you going to borrow from at 2.75%? Maybe a mortgage lender but they have you locked in for 15-30 years with a hefty down payment. Then again, I haven't bothered to look into too many of the various lines of credit these days, maybe a home equity loan would be be available and low enough to make sense, but I suspect if it were that easy we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I just found out another aspect of the FED's loan scam: One cannot refinance a Federally backed student loan. Wow, that's freaking awful. 2021 rate is only 2.75%
Yup, I've been locked in at 4.75% on my federal student loans since 2005. I've never missed a payment, but the balance has barely dropped. The principal has gone down by about 15% over 15 years.
I'm not getting why the interest rate isn't simply indexed to the Federal prime lending rate, rather than setting up a Bureaucracy of Loan Forgiveness.
That way, college students can "take responsibility for funding their own education" without being caught in a usury trap.
Because there are multiple lenders in the market place (federal and private) - often times private lenders have significantly higher costs. By drawing attention to them, by indexing with Prime (it creates more traffic away from the more expensive loans). This is one reason. There may be more.
There's also the fact that we don't have a public national banking institution; instead, we have the Federal Reserve system which is an entity run by private individuals- regional "governors", appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate- that works as an intermediary between the US Treasury and the privately owned banks. I don't pretend to be up on the pros and cons of that situation.
I do find it worthy of note that the Federal Reserve is routinely cast by old-school American political conservatives as instrumental to a conspiratorial plot by "finance capital socialists"*, five of the seven Federal Reserve Bank Governors are Republicans (currently, there's one vacancy.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Governors
[*I could use a lot more explanatory clarification on that particular narrative.]
┬лthe Federal Reserve is routinely cast by old-school American political conservatives as instrumental to a conspiratorial plot by "finance capital socialists"*, five of the seven Federal Reserve Bank Governors are Republicans┬╗
There are several different factions of the "right", at least the "libertarians" (Ron Paul etc.), the "populists" (Buchanan, Perot, Trump, ...), the "corporatists" (McConnell etc.), the "financialists" (Romney etc.); geographically someone proposed a three-way split between yankee bankers, texas oilmen and west coast tech moguls.
The left seems to be morphing into Hollywoodists,tech moguls, and global corporatists for the most part. Of course all of this hides behind a facade of woke equality that pretends to care about the poor despite not being able to stand the smell of them.
┬лThe left seems to be morphing into Hollywoodists,tech moguls, and global corporatists for the most part.┬╗
That's the victorian liberal right, the "whigs", and here is the confession by a notorious "whig" in a notorious "whig" periodical:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwald-the-bane-of-their-resistance
┬лJoan Walsh, the national-affairs correspondent of The Nation, and GreenwaldтАЩs former editor at Salon, recently said that left-wing Trump-Russia skepticism contains тАЬreal disdain for what the democratic Party has become.тАЭ She went on, тАЬThat would mean its closeness to finance, and Wall Street.тАЭ┬╗
┬лa facade of woke equality that pretends to care about the poor┬╗
I think they don't that: the "whig" side story is that the poor are "losers" to which "the markets" are giving their just deserts, unless they are female, or black, or gay, in which case they are discriminated, or are white in which case they are racist, sexist, homophobic "deplorables" who doubly failed, as they are failures despite their privilege.
Except that if Fannie or Freddie is holding your home loan you can refinance that.
To the same crowd of private bankster thugs.
So...borrow at the low rate and pay off the higher rate loan? Thing is, who are you going to borrow from at 2.75%? Maybe a mortgage lender but they have you locked in for 15-30 years with a hefty down payment. Then again, I haven't bothered to look into too many of the various lines of credit these days, maybe a home equity loan would be be available and low enough to make sense, but I suspect if it were that easy we wouldn't be having this conversation.