If Obama succeeds in nationalizing that debt the private "net worth" just went up, and the figures make it look like we're having a nice recovery.
That's not what I'm seeing, let's think together on this. If we take money out of our bank and buy T-bills, our net worth stays the same as bank balances are replaced with bond holdings.
right now student loan debt counts against individual "net-worth".
This whole topic is based on the Fed's "Flow of Funds" report that came out last Thurday. The private 'net-worth' breakdown is on table B.101 (147th pdf page or page 133 in the report) and the money that folks have loaned out directly to students is listed in is on line 23 at $33.2B. The money borrowed and owed by students is part of the $3,316.3B 'consumer credit' on line 34 --broken down in L.222 (139th pdf page or page 125 in the report). I got too much free time on Saturdays.
You're right that we've got to account for the national debt in private hands but net-worth calcs aren't where we should go. Another blind alley (imho) is name-calling: Obama says adding $4 trillion to debt is unpatriotic. - YouTube. My take is that what we're spending our tax dollars on is what's important. I like the idea of slashing fed spending on "human resources" (3/4 of spending) and put a lot more into defense (less than 1/6). For revenue I vote for borrowing it all from foreigners at zero percent and make this years taxes payable a year later with no penalty.
I say debt's not what we should worry about, but spending priorities are.