Anyone willing to bet on a devaluation of the dollar when all the debt bubbles burst?

[Kinser79]

(05-19-2016, 05:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The troublesome debt is private debt -- not public debt.

Indeed, and it isn't even just Student loans. I am suspicious of all unsecured debt (naturally this would exclude auto loans and mortgages as those are secured with a durable consumer good) and have been debt free for over 10 years. Of course because I'm thrifty I have almost no credit, but I could care less there is very little I wish to buy that I actually need credit for.

Quote:Uncle Sucker (ultimately US taxpayers) could be stuck guaranteeing the student loans to those who attended worthless vocational schools.  The bulk of the student loan debt isn't to people who went to first-rate colleges or to modest programs that teach hairdressing or clerical skills; it was to the rip-off institutions that charged students attending suspect 'career training' as if they were attending first-rate schools.

Quite possible, and to liquidate these debts, the federal government would have to take on more public debt because it would have to assume not only the principle but also the interest. This means that the federal government would have to spend all that extra money into existance and financial institutions would seek to put that money to work somewhere--blowing up a bubble somewhere.

We Americans are going to pick up the tab one way or the other. The George W. Bush Administration pushed such education heavily in the belief that such schools would perform miracles. Those schools generally failed badly.

Quote:1. The people watching such shows are either unemployed or have a night-time job and hate it.

As someone who worked overnight for years, if they work at night they aren't watching washday weepers. They are in bed sleeping in a room that has been totally blacked out in some way. I generally reccomend aluminum foil taped to the windows--blue painter's tape works great for this.

So the persons watching such shows are likely unemployed.

Quote:2. People who watch large amounts of daytime television  don't generally, and generally have not gone to or are not attending college.

Citation needed.

Quote: (It is a general pattern that well-educated people watch little television anyway). People who watch schlock television -- the sort in which chairs might fly -- are generally close to the low end in intellectual ability, anyway, and are unlikely to do well in any academic setting.

Again citation needed. Talk shows are not my particular cup of tea but it is possible that those with a university degree might find amusement in low brow entertainment. Just because you happen to be a snob doesn't mean everyone else is.

Quote:...The schools got their money up front from the federal government as loans. There was little quality control. The schools had marketing costs as a big part of their expenses. In case you wondered: Harvard University spends little on marketing. It doesn't have to. Neither does the University of Michigan, nor for that matter most state colleges. If you are a Catholic kid of above-average intelligence you know about Notre Dame University and even know what exit to take to it off the Indiana Toll Road. Corinthian Colleges, which owned several of the for-profit educational institutions that have very poor records for their students earning enough to pay off the loans, spent heavily on marketing.

Generally speaking good schools do not need to market they have built-in marketing in the success of their alumni, however this is not always the case. I've hired several bakers who attended Le Cordon Bleu which does advertise on tee-vee (that is a culinary school that works with many 'community colleges') and they were quite highly skilled for just having gotten culinary degrees in pastry work. That being said they are simply not on the level of someone who went to Culinary Institute of America but that institute is incredibly difficult to get into.

Quote:The Obama Administration practically shut those schools down. That was the responsible thing to do. The regulation of college debt is now much tighter.

But not tight enough. The US is one of the few countries that views education as a luxury. Many other developed countries offer school without tuition--particularly to those who need it the most, IE the highly intelligent but poor people. Tuition costs could be lowered even at top level state schools by getting rid of bloated administration, cutting off white elephant projects and reducing the focus on sport to in some schools.