Tag: student loans

President Biden changing his mind on student loan forgiveness ‘is a tremendous victory,’ Rep. Pressley says

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-forgiveness-biden-pressley-141234731.html

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Pressley, alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have repeatedly called on Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt immediately via executive order on the premise that there is sufficient legal backing for the administration to do so.

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Cancelling $10,000 in student loan debt per borrower would help the most number of borrowers at the lowest cost, recent research from the New York Fed found.

The Fed researchers, using data from the New York Fed/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, estimated the cost of two federal loan forgiveness proposals, one for $10,000 and another for $50,000. They found that limited forgiveness and placing income caps on who would be eligible would “distribute a larger share of benefits” to low-income borrowers while also reducing the cost of forgiveness.

Rep. Pressley has repeatedly stressed that women and people of color hold significant levels of student loan debt and that cancellation would represent a massively impactful form of relief given the disproportionate burden.

Author(s): Aarthi Swaminathan

Publication Date: 30 Apr 2022

Publication Site: Yahoo Finance

The End of Joe Biden’s Student Debt Prison May Be in Sight

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/04/biden-student-debt-loan-forgiveness-bankruptcy

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Bankruptcy courts have not been friendly to student borrowers. That’s at least partly attributable to Biden. In 2005, “the senator from MBNA,” so named for his close relationship with the credit card company that was also his largest donor, was one of eighteen Senate Democrats who backed a successful Republican-led bankruptcy reform bill that stripped private student loans of bankruptcy protection amid an explosion of private loan debt.

“He is a zealous advocate on behalf of one of his biggest contributors — the financial services industry,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said of Biden at the time.

For his part, Biden argued the law was necessary to prevent abuse of the system by borrowers who could afford to repay some of their debt. He and other supporters of the bankruptcy bill claimed the legislation would enable private lenders to lower costs for people seeking credit. But both arguments were ultimately proven wrong — abuse was minimal, and interest rates in general did not go down. Instead, the law resulted in a system that leaves borrowers with few options for relief.

Author(s): Walker Bragman

Publication Date: 8 April 2021

Publication Site: Jacobin Magazine

Coronavirus Was Supposed to Drive Bankruptcies Higher. The Opposite Happened.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-was-supposed-to-drive-bankruptcies-higher-the-opposite-happened-11617010201?mod=djemwhatsnews

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The number of people seeking bankruptcy fell sharply during the pandemic as government aid propped up income and staved off housing and student-loan obligations.

Bankruptcy filings by consumers under chapter 7 were down 22% last year compared with 2019, while individual filings under chapter 13 fell 46%, according to Epiq data. After holding above 50,000 filings a month in 2019 and in the first quarter of 2020, bankruptcy filings have remained below 40,000 a month since last March when the pandemic hit.

By contrast, commercial bankruptcy filings rose 29%, with more than 7,100 businesses seeking chapter 11 protection last year, according to Epiq.

Author(s): Soma Biswas, Harriet Torry

Publication Date: 29 March 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal