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We've been hearing for some time about how crushing student debt is. It's particularly amusing to hear about it from students who spent six figures getting their degree in something like lesbian fruitbat studies, but plenty of young people have talked about how difficult it is for them to live with debt they accrued in college.However, a new poll found out a few things about what many students use their student loan money on, and I'm a little less sympathetic than I was. A majority of college "Greek" students have used student loan money to pay membership dues to their...

Soak this in: It's now possible that Trump's biggest legislative wins this year will be more spending and raising the debt cap — the exact opposite of what Tea Party Republicans came to D.C. to do. Trump "brazenly rolled his own party's leaders," as AP put it. Plus his own Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin — in front of leaders of both parties. Why it matters: Tax reform is now less likely, with trust ruptured between Trump and Republican Hill leaders. Democrats are more likely to flip the House in 2018: Republicans have less than ever to show their voters. A...

Not that anyone in the LSM would get this, as well as some in the Establishment in D.C., but Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer blinked yesterday on raising the debt ceiling in order to give their support to Hurricane relief efforts. How you ask? Two words . . . Tax Reform. For awhile now the trial balloons have been floating in the air about what the Trump Administration wants to see as the basic way to reform the system to push more tax relief to the middle class and corporations while not giving the upper levels of income a break...

President Donald Trump forged a surprising deal with Democrats in Congress on Wednesday to extend the U.S. debt limit and provide government funding until Dec. 15, embracing his political adversaries and blindsiding fellow Republicans in a rare bipartisan accord. Trump, living up to his reputation for unpredictability, met at the White House with congressional leaders from both parties and overruled Republicans and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who wanted a longer-term debt-limit extension rather than the three-month Democratic proposal the president embraced. “We could have done a one-year deal today,” Mnuchin told reporters aboard Air Force One later in the...

The Democrats are in control of the government. The Republicans may have the majority in both houses of Congress. They may have the presidency. But make no mistake: It’s Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who are calling the shots in Washington, D.C., with President Donald J. Trump’s support. The president’s total capitulation occurred in a Wednesday meeting with congressional leaders from both parties. Earlier, Minority Leaders Pelosi and Schumer proposed a plan to tie Hurricane Harvey relief to a short-term debt ceiling increase until mid-December. Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., slammed the plan as “ridiculous and disgraceful,” accusing the Democrats of...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday the nation’s debt ceiling will be raised in September and that after talks with congressional leaders from both parties everyone is “on the same page.” “My strong preference is that we have a clean debt ceiling (increase), but the most important issue is the debt ceiling will be raised in September,” Mnuchin told reporters at the White House, indicating an interest in legislation that did not stray into unrelated territory. “I have had discussions with the leaders in both parties in the House and Senate and we are all on the same...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday congressional leaders could have avoided a legislative "mess" if they had heeded his advice on raising the U.S. debt ceiling, renewing criticism of fellow Republicans whose support he needs to advance his policy agenda. Trump said he had advised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan to link passage of legislation raising the debt ceiling to a measure on veterans affairs that he signed on Aug. 12. "I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which...

President Donald Trump criticized Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan as Congress faces another round of debt ceiling politics. Trump revealed that he requested both leaders to put the debt ceiling legislation into the Veterans Affairs Bill so that it would pass easily, but said they didn’t listen. “They didn’t do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Could have been so easy-now a mess!” McConnell said in a speech on Monday that there was “zero chance” that Congress...

China has got to fix its debt problem, the IMF says The IMF issued its annual review of China, revising its growth forecast to 6.7 percent for 2017, from 6.2 percent But Beijing, the IMF said, needs to address its growing debt problem Sophia Yan Published 10 Hours Ago | Updated 2 Hours Ago China's economy is looking good enough that the International Monetary Fund is raising its outlook, but the organization is doing so with a strong warning over growing debt in the world's second-largest economy. The IMF issued its annual review of China on Tuesday, and has revised...

Twelve years after finishing Harvard’s graduate theater program, Katierose Donohue still pays almost as much in student loans each month — about $650 — as for her share of the rent in Los Angeles. She recently stopped hosting her monthly sketch comedy show, “Ma’am,” because she didn’t always break even on her $200 budget. She’s now working side jobs as a dog walker and a social media copywriter, after past gigs serving at Starbucks and handing out free cigarettes for Camel. She’s never missed a loan payment, but there’s no end in sight: She borrowed nearly $75,000 to attend the...

China’s debt surpasses 300 percent of GDP, IIF says, raising doubts over Yellen’s crisis remarks Silvia Amaro Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017 Global debt has hit a record level in the first quarter of this year, mainly driven by emerging markets, raising questions of whether there will be another financial crisis in the near future. Data from the Institute of International Finance showed that global debt reached $217 trillion in the first quarter of this year, or 327 percent of gross domestic product. "The debt burden is not distributed evenly. Some countries/sectors have seen deleveraging while others have built up very...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says federal borrowing limit must increase by Sept. 29, giving lawmakers little time after recess to act Republicans are leaving town for an August recess after a failed attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. When they return in September, they’ll have just 12 working days to avert another big problem. In a letter to lawmakers Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the federal borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, needed to be raised by Sept. 29 or the government risked running out of money to pay its bills.

Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the state’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher. Whenever we open the books, Illinois is consistently one of the worst offenders. Recently, we found auto pound supervisors in Chicago making $144,453; nurses at state corrections earning up to $254,781; junior college presidents making $465,420; university doctors earning $1.6 million; and 84 small-town “managers” out-earning every U.S. governor. Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 63,000 Illinois public employees who earn more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers...

"Fed Chair Janet Yellen says that in looking at asset prices and valuations, the central bank is 'not trying to opine on whether they're correct'; instead, policy makers are assessing the risk of potential spillovers. As asset prices rise, there hasn't been a substantial increase in borrowing, Yellen said. [The] financial system is strong and resilient." I assume chair Yellen is referring to U.S. non-financial and non-government borrowings. Clearly, central bank Credit and government borrowings have expanded spectacularly around the globe. I suspect as well there has been a major expansion in speculative leveraging and securities Credit at home and...

Under the leadership of former Obama official Tom Perez, a new FEC report reveals the DNC finished the month of June $3.3 million in debt. They’re broke. Just like their policies. Per the FEC: FILING FEC-1174219 1. DNC Services Corp./Dem. Nat’l Committee 430 South Capitol Street, SE Washington, DC 20003 2. FEC Committee ID #: C00010603 3. This committee HAS qualified as a multicandidate committee (see FEC Form 1M) 4. Report Type = JUL MONTHLY Filed: 07/20/2017 5. Covering Period 06/01/2017 Through 06/30/2017

Billions of dollars in student loans may be wiped out for tens of thousands of borrowers in the US because a lender didn't keep track of the paperwork verifying ownership of the loans, according to The New York Times. The National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts, which holds 800,000 private loans and is one of the country's largest owners of private student loans, is at the center of the legal dispute, the Times reported. Borrowers are failing to repay more than $5 billion of the $12 billion in private student loans held by National Collegiate, sending the loans into default. The...

Tens of thousands of people who took out private loans to pay for college but have not been able to keep up payments may get their debts wiped away because critical paperwork is missing. The troubled loans, which total at least $5 billion, are at the center of a protracted legal dispute between the student borrowers and a group of creditors who have aggressively pursued them in court after they fell behind on payments. Judges have already dismissed dozens of lawsuits against former students, essentially wiping out their debt, because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. A review...

Our columnist Jazz Shaw wrote earlier in the week about the dreadful financial crisis in the state of Illinois. The deadline for a budget deal is July 1st which makes tomorrow the last day for lawmakers to try to arrive at the state’s first budget agreement in three years. From CNN Money: After decades of historic mismanagement, Illinois is now grappling with $15 billion of unpaid bills and an unthinkable quarter-trillion dollars owed to public employees when they retire.The budget crisis has forced Illinois to jack up property taxes so high that people are leaving in droves. Illinois may...

The amount of money the government spends on programs and the amount it collects in taxes could change from the budget office projections, so the office warns that the Treasury could run out of funds even earlier. Currently, the federal deficit stands at $693 billion, which is an increase of $134 billion than what it projected in January. The federal government has an outstanding debt of $19.8 trillion, which includes $14.3 trillion in public debt and $5.5 trillion held by government accounts. Spending on major government programs such as Social Security and Medicare causes the amount of borrowing to increase....

If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday, the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status. Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations, and no budget. "We can't manage our money," says Rauner. "We're like a banana republic." Speaking of banana republics, Puerto Rico, which owes $74 billion to creditors who hold its tax-exempt bonds, and $40 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, has already entered bankruptcy proceedings. The island's imaginative 38-year-old governor, Ricardo...