Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

2 Comments

1. 

   Having students pay for outrageous tuitions using the vehicle of student loan debt is a policy that has now come home to roost. This policy seemed to give students access to capital from all-too-willing banks, but in reality has become a mechanism of enforced dissaving from THOSE LEAST ABLE TO PAY for these loans back to the banks. The government, as the lender of last resort, underwrites the banks’ capital losses should the loans go into default, but this was no more than an earlier form of taxpayer bailout provided to banks presaging the taxpayer-funded bailouts of recent years. The so-called “consolidation loan”, rather than being a mechanism of real relief, merely transfers the indenture from the private sector (the originating bank) back to the public sector, where wage slaves (the former students) can now help fund the public sector deficits instead of purchasing homes, cars or starting families. A better policy would have been to acknowledge that students are those most unable to repay any kind of loan at the outset and simply require repayment of principal, rather than principal plus interest, which is condemning both students and the economy to perpetual underperformance–the state we now find ourselves in.

   By: Karl Kortepeter . May 18, 2012 . 12:13 pm |

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2. 

   Global plantation: coming soon to your neighborhood.

   Fee-fi-fo-fum,
   I smell the blood of an Englishman,
   Be he alive, or be he dead
   I’ll have his bones to grind my bread.

   By: willb . May 23, 2012 . 10:12 am |

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