Kunstler on the impending student loan implosion

i'm very grateful to have been in a position to finance my daughter's graduate degree... the last thing i wanted for her was to see her handed a masters degree along with a multi-year debt load... owing dad is a whole lot different than owing the banksters...

james howard kunstler...

And is there a Millennial so dim who believes that the promised package of lifetime goodies once called "a job with benefits" waits like a liveried servant to conduct them without friction through the ceremonies of career and family according to premises and promises of an obsolete American Dream? Dreams do die hard. As dreams go it was a pretty good one while it lasted, but like all dreams, it has vanished in the mists of a new morning leaving the dreamers half-sick, anxious, and drained. They have nothing to lose but their fears of the re-po man and the simulated dudgeon of telephone robot debt-collectors.

[...]

The colleges themselves will, of course, implode shortly, along with everything else currently organized on the super-gigantic scale. They are no more prepared for what is about to happen to them than the chiselers in government, banking, medicine, and global corporate enterprise. We will wonder in retrospect how they ever managed to winkle 50-grand a year for their absurd promises, and how we permitted young people with undeveloped powers of judgment to sign their financial lives away on terms even more stringent than their parents' mortgages. When the universities do go down, tossing their employees overboard in the process, it will be interesting to see the former faculty chairpersons and distinguished professors of econometric modeling learn how to plant kale and care for chickens side-by-side with their formerly-indentured students.

[...]

The college loan money will not be paid back anyway, so Millennial youth ought to seize the golden opportunity to make the deliberate point that the years of swindling are officially over now. This strange jubilee could, and should, change everything.

kunstler is making a prediction that this latest collapse will peak during the national political conventions in charlotte and tampa... i guess we'll see, won't we...?

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Insensitive, tone-deaf Democrats want to sell more skyboxes at BofA Stadium in Charlotte

the news about the democratic national convention's choice of charlotte's bank of america stadium as the venue for obama to accept the presidential nomination ought to answer any questions as to how sincere are the concerns of the left side of our utterly broken two-party system for us peasants... selling "more skyboxes to wealthy donors" plus the enormous free advertising bofa will reap from the wall-to-wall media coverage before, during and after, clearly demonstrates who obama and the democratic party sees as their constituents...

For a party trying to cast itself as fighters for the middle class against Wall Street greed, Democrats are making some curious choices -- at least symbolically -- when it comes to planning for their 2012 convention.

They don't think it's a problem that they're holding their convention in Charlotte, N.C., a city sometimes referred to as "The Wall Street of the South." They also don't think it's a big deal that President Barack Obama is slated to accept the Democratic presidential nomination at Bank of America Stadium, named for the bank that received a $45 billion bailout during the financial crisis and sparked outrage by imposing a $5 monthly debit card fee on its customers. The fee was later dropped.

Democratic officials are also downplaying reports that the real reason they're choosing to hold the final day of their convention at Bank of America Stadium isn't because it means more seats for convention attendees, but because it would allow them to sell more skyboxes to wealthy donors.

Regardless of how much credence they give to such details, the visuals are a stark contrast to the populist image that Democrats are trying to project ahead of the November elections. Obama and congressional Democrats have been ramping up rhetoric about Republicans siding with big banks and wealthy people, while Democrats stand up for average Americans in need of jobs, health care and education.

"They will fight with their last breath to protect tax cuts for the most fortunate Americans," Obama said last week at a Chicago fundraiser. "We cannot go back to this brand of 'you are on your own economics.'"

Any irony in holding the Democratic National Convention at Bank of America Stadium was lost on Democrats involved in convention planning, however. Most said they hadn't heard of the "Wall Street of the South" moniker; some noted, after spontaneous Google searches, that other cities including Galveston and Atlanta have also been slapped with the title. Charlotte gets the name because it is home to Bank of America world headquarters and the East Coast headquarters of Wells Fargo, which makes it the nation's second-largest banking center after New York.

screw 'em... here's one voter that isn't falling for their bullshit populist rhetoric...

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