Love the expanded number of broadcasts and the Marshall / Sagaar debate episodes. It is great to hear hosts wrestle with difficult topics and respectfully disagree. It is good to see Marshall and the expanded partnership appearances on Breaking Points, as well. Could we see a "Realignment News Network" in the future? (reasoning: Breaking Points is great, but the Brand power of a single resonant word like, "Realignment" seems too good to pass up - awesome logo too!). Keep up the great work, Marshall is my favorite podcast voice in the biz (both audio and interview style)!
Regarding student loan debt, it is a losing proposition to look at it in isolation without full context. And agreed, it also makes little common sense to "deal with it" without also structurally addressing the higher educational system.
To put it in context, (federally guaranteed) nondischaregable debt should never have been set at an interest rate above the rate of back taxes (3%). They are functionally equivalent forms of debt obligation. And even when the government became the direct lender during the Obama administration, the rates were set at 6.8% and have remained unchanged since. The premium charged above the rate on back taxes has, going on a decade and a half, been illegitimate and indefensible.
Include also the context of FED largesse, QE infinity, and manipulated interest rates across the spectrum. And also include other financial realities. Mortgage forbearance was also available for nearly two years during Covid. Today, the FED still owns roughly 1/3 of all mortgage bonds on its balance sheet. The collapsed those interest rates to their lowest levels in history. Nearly 50% of home owners refinanced their mortages during this artificial suppression of interest rates. Doesn't this contituency skew older, more wealthy, more suburban/rural, and more Republican? This was probably the single biggest windfall from fiscal stimulus of the Covid period, and yet, most of these people will likely get angered by any attempt to address student or credit card debt.
There are defensible ways to deal with the debt burdens. Unfortunately, neither party, nor the FED, has a decent track record of producing universal policies or seems to have much interest in doing so. All economic policy is basically class warfare, yet is subsumed into the incoherent cultural warfare. At the very least, Democrats could tie the interest rate on student debt to the interest rate on back taxes (perhaps with a credit for the excess over so many years). It is a defensible position. It might be good policy to try to make good on more than one or two of their previous electoral promises.
But it is still not going to save them in the midterms.
Love the expanded number of broadcasts and the Marshall / Sagaar debate episodes. It is great to hear hosts wrestle with difficult topics and respectfully disagree. It is good to see Marshall and the expanded partnership appearances on Breaking Points, as well. Could we see a "Realignment News Network" in the future? (reasoning: Breaking Points is great, but the Brand power of a single resonant word like, "Realignment" seems too good to pass up - awesome logo too!). Keep up the great work, Marshall is my favorite podcast voice in the biz (both audio and interview style)!
Regarding student loan debt, it is a losing proposition to look at it in isolation without full context. And agreed, it also makes little common sense to "deal with it" without also structurally addressing the higher educational system.
To put it in context, (federally guaranteed) nondischaregable debt should never have been set at an interest rate above the rate of back taxes (3%). They are functionally equivalent forms of debt obligation. And even when the government became the direct lender during the Obama administration, the rates were set at 6.8% and have remained unchanged since. The premium charged above the rate on back taxes has, going on a decade and a half, been illegitimate and indefensible.
Include also the context of FED largesse, QE infinity, and manipulated interest rates across the spectrum. And also include other financial realities. Mortgage forbearance was also available for nearly two years during Covid. Today, the FED still owns roughly 1/3 of all mortgage bonds on its balance sheet. The collapsed those interest rates to their lowest levels in history. Nearly 50% of home owners refinanced their mortages during this artificial suppression of interest rates. Doesn't this contituency skew older, more wealthy, more suburban/rural, and more Republican? This was probably the single biggest windfall from fiscal stimulus of the Covid period, and yet, most of these people will likely get angered by any attempt to address student or credit card debt.
There are defensible ways to deal with the debt burdens. Unfortunately, neither party, nor the FED, has a decent track record of producing universal policies or seems to have much interest in doing so. All economic policy is basically class warfare, yet is subsumed into the incoherent cultural warfare. At the very least, Democrats could tie the interest rate on student debt to the interest rate on back taxes (perhaps with a credit for the excess over so many years). It is a defensible position. It might be good policy to try to make good on more than one or two of their previous electoral promises.
But it is still not going to save them in the midterms.