Elizabeth Warren on Student Loans

I got this email from Elizabeth Warren:

Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts

Steven —

We won’t win every fight — at least, not the first time out.

This week, the Senate passed a student loans bill that asks tomorrow’s students to pay drastically higher interest rates to finance lower rates today.

The vote may be over, but our fight to make college more affordable — and the fight for a better deal for our students — is just getting started.

In May, I introduced the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act to give students the same low interest rates that the big banks get. If those 0.75% rate is good enough for the big banks, it’s good enough for our kids who are trying to get an education. And as long as the government continues to make hundreds of billions in profits off our students, I’ll keep fighting.

In the long term, we need to do three things:

  • First, we must eliminate government profits from student loan programs — period.

  • Second, we must refinance existing student debt to reduce the profits that are crushing our young people and dragging down our economy.

  • And third, we must reduce college costs so that American families can send their kids to school without mortgaging their futures and burying themselves in debt.

I’m in this fight for the long haul, and I’ll keep working to attack these problems head-on and find solutions that will provide a real shot at an education for all of our students.

Thank you for being a part of this — for the long haul,

Elizabeth

 


To put it in my own words, whereas the government ought to be subsidizing higher education, instead it is actually exacting a profit from it.  So the government is doing the opposite of what it ought to be doing.  Cutting the government’s profit only makes it a little less bad.  


Oh yes, the Democrats want to subsidize education and the Republicans want to make a profit from it.  So what does the bipartisan compromise look like?  The government makes more profit from the compromise than it would have with no bill at all.  Seems like a nice even, bipartisan split.  See what good things happen when the two sides get together and come to an agreement?


If we are going to compete in international markets by the level of education of our workforce, then we shouldn’t be charging people to get that education when our competitors are subsidizing the education of their students.  And we wonder why we are falling behind?


It’s not like we can’t afford to subsidize higher education.  We can’t afford not to.


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
Bear Proof Bird Feeder Pole
        

        
I just got word that The Bird Store and More has posted the following video about their bear proof bird feeder pole.



    





Compare this to my puny attempt to make a bear proof pole, Bird Feeder Stands Up In A Big Wind – April 9, 2012.  I can’t imagine my pole withstanding a real bear attack like the one shown in Bill Cormier’s video.


Bill has explained to me the engineering and construction details of his pole.  It far exceeds what I dreamed up in strength, easy of use, and attention to detail. (Also perhaps cost.)


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
Is This “The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER…”
        

        
Sorry for the vulgarity in the video below.  Be warned.



    





My verdict is that this is not The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER….  The script writer, Aaron Sorkin, has a very distorted view of our history.


We stood up for what was right – genocide of the native population, slavery.


We fought for moral reasons United Fruit in South America, oil in the middle east. We didn’t get caught on the wrong side of history by all the dictators we backed and put into power.


We never beat our chest as we entered the space race.  We didn’t televise the moon landing.  We didn’t have the USIA and Radio Free Europe. Fortunately we have our women baring theirs.  We didn’t misinterpret the title of the book The Ugly American by thinking it referred to our behavior when we were visitors in other countries.


We cultivated the world’s greatest artists.  Beethoven was born in Brooklyn and Leonardo DaVinci was born in little Italy.


We acted like men until Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem told us we were overdoing it.  Still, we  couldn’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment.


We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t call Adlai Stevenson an  egghead to belittle him compared to Eisenhower the war hero.  We didn’t go after the Professors in academia by trying to brand them as Communists.


We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election – really?


We were able to do these things because we were informed. James W. Loewen didn’t write the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
Chinese Scientists Announce ‘Safe’ Way To Create Stem Cells
        

        
Design & Trend has the story Chinese Scientists Announce ‘Safe’ Way To Create Stem Cells.


The previous method of accomplishing this had been extremely complicated–and as a result of that complication, limited the clinical uses of such cells. This new method however has no such drawback.  Professor Deng Hongkui of Peking University. the leader of the Chinese team, said in their study that his team validated “a whole new route” to pluripotent stem cells.


Besides the value of this discovery by Chinese scientists in China, there is another take away from this article.  Though much of our semiconductor technology is now in China, India, and South Korea along with many of our high tech jobs, we can always count on our lead in biotech to lower the unemployment rate. Certainly, none of the emerging countries in Asia will be able to catch up to our lead.  Certainly, the Republican effort to prevent funding for embryonic stem cell research in this country will not drive our biotech scientists to other countries to do some of their research. Anyway, the Republicans have a moral position to uphold, and economic concerns pale in the face of morals.  You surely know that Republicans think morality comes before business and profit.


Just as assuredly, you cannot find any irony nor any sarcasm in what I have said before. Moreover, nobody could see any circular reasoning in what I have said.


Remember that you will not find the definition of the word gullible if you were to look it up on the internet.


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
G-20 backs plan to curb tax avoidance by large corporations
        

        
The Boston Globe has the story G-20 backs plan to curb tax avoidance by large corporations.


The world’s richest economies for the first time endorsed a blueprint Friday to curb widely used tax avoidance strategies that allow some multinational corporations to pay only a pittance in income taxes.


I have been realizing for quite some time that the solution to the race to the bottom of international companies meeting their tax obligations must come at an international level.  No single country, even one with the large economy of the United States, can solve this problem.  We might have come to this solution many years ago had not George Bush put a stop to the efforts by our country to work with other countries to solve these problems.  What a difference a President makes.


If you cannot get to The Boston Globe article through their pay wall, there is a hint to what is in this article on The Boston Globe free site, in the article G20 finance ministers aim for more growth.


Stashing profits offshore may soon get tougher for companies, thanks to an ambitious plan released Friday by the finance chiefs of leading world economies aimed at forcing multinationals to pay more taxes.


 


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
There Is No Liquidity Trap: Understanding 21st Century Monetary Policy
        

        
The Peterson Institute for International Economics has this short piece on their web site, There Is No Liquidity Trap: Understanding 21st Century Monetary Policy.


As long as there exist assets whose price would be pushed up (and rate of return pushed down) by extra demand, monetary policy remains effective and there is no liquidity trap. Fiscal policy may be a useful alternative or complement to monetary policy in certain circumstances, but it is not a necessary alternative even when the short-term risk-free interest rate is zero.

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There is no reason to doubt that central bank purchases of equity or real estate could significantly influence the prices of those assets.


I was thinking of all the arguments against these ideas, and wondering if I needed to broaden my thinking to accept what this author, Joseph E. Gagnon, was saying.  Then I started to think beyond the examples of equity and real estate.  The Fed could buy roads and bridges.  At this point I realized why monetary policy could do all the things that we think only fiscal policy can do.  You just change your definition of monetary policy to include all the things in fiscal policy, and then everything becomes possible.


The official explanation of the Peterson Institute says:


The Peterson Institute for International Economics is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution devoted to the study of international economic policy.


While The Peterson Institute does employ some very respectable economists, I am always a little suspicious of the Institute because of some of the strongly held, and wacky, economic ideas held by the founder and money bags behind the institute, Pete Peterson.


It might be very interesting and worthwhile to follow up the links to citations in the article.


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
Elizabeth Warren, hard-liner
        

        
Here is another one for my fellow Elizabeth Warren fans.  Politico has the article Elizabeth Warren, hard-liner.


Earlier this week at the White House, President Barack Obama tried to use his powers of persuasion on Elizabeth Warren, privately urging the consumer watchdog-turned-Massachusetts senator to back the student loan deal he was reaching with Senate leaders.


It didn’t work.


On Thursday, she went to the Senate floor to attack the plan, saying it would hurt students and benefit big banks. “I think this whole system stinks. We should not go along with any plan that continues to produce profits for the government. It is wrong,” Warren said.


Warren’s stance accomplished two things.  The compromise bill got passed so that an immediate problem was ameliorated.  She moved the center of debate farther left.  The failings of the bill that got passed can be fixed after the debate moves to where it ought to be.


I particularly liked one comment that I saw in response to the article.


After living in a house with a bunch of smoker, or a bunch of dogs, or in the case of the US house and senate, no one ever flushing the toilet, it is refreshing to hear someone walk in to the place and say this place stinks.


It’s about time.


    

    
                                    

                                
                                                            
                                                                    
                                
                                                            
                                                                    

                                        
    

              

          
Study Links High Stakes Testing to Higher Incarceration Rates
        

        
The Real News Network has the interview about the Study Links High Stakes Testing to Higher Incarceration Rates.









One of the interviewees stated that



We can’t have cruelty as part of education policy.



Why not, I ask?  My friends that have stayed in the business world longer than I have confirm that cruelty is part of industrial policy of major corporations.  Why not teach the kids what they are going to face when they go to work?


For those of you who are inclined to believe what I said above, I state most emphatically that I am being sarcastic.