The Compleat Student Loan Scam Primer

Many have written about the Higher Education Bubble and the Student Loan Scam, but never have I seen them explained so completely and concisely, and illustrated with irrefutable data, as this post from Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds. Click on over and read the whole thing, but here's a teaser:

There are three dirty little secrets buried under the education/student-loan complex's high-gloss sheen:

1. Student loans have little to do with education and everything to do with creating a new profit center for subprime-type lenders guaranteed by the Savior State.

2. A college diploma's value in the real world of getting a job and earning a good salary in a post-financialization economy has been grossly oversold.

3. Many people are taking out student loans just to live; the loans are essentially a form of "State funding" a.k.a. welfare that must be paid back.

The third point, student loans as welfare, is new to me, but not surprising. Making "student loans" that prop up consumer spending but will never be paid back is just a way to do more stimulus spending without it showing up in the deficit. That debt will be forgiven by taxpayers decades from now, when the miscreants in power today have retired to a private life of luxury.

And Karl Denninger weighs in on just-released data showing that consumer credit is still collapsing except for student loans. Those poor college kids are being made debt slaves for life in order to keep the bubble going past another election or two.