Yes, it's high time student loan borrowers were helped

November 28th has passed - the newbies are now facing student loan payment hell. I have already heard from a few new people who have joined our ranks. They're not happy, and they're having a helluva time paying their student loans and making ends meet. Honestly, I'm not sure how most people are doing it. I think it's safe to assume that most people are beginning to realize that they may soon fall off the grid and slip into that horrific realm that Mark Kantrowitz recently discussed. I call it Defaulter's hell. It's a devastating place filled with different types of devilish traps. Once there, people quickly lose all hope. They are ravaged and what they had been before - hopeful, energetic, adventurous - has died. Now they are wounded, howling beasts. Pathetic, isn't it? It's all thanks to an unregulated industry that continues to turn humans into angry, hopeless creatures.

Instead of discussing yet another relief program for mortgage holders, Tom Ranzetta over at SLA asked a question that I'd like answered: "So, what hope is there for struggling student loan borrowers?" 

And don't tell me about IBR again. It's giving me an upset stomach, not to mention that it bores me. We need more. A LOT MORE.

I think it's pretty obvious why no one wants to talk about the student lending crisis. It's related to the banks and bailing out Wall Street. It's related to the most heinous aspects of our broken, so-called free market system (Yeah, if it were so "free," you WOULD HAVE LET THE BANKS FAIL.).

How many more of us will be reduced to living out lives so destitute and miserable that we'd actually begin to envy all those cars filled with cattle going off to slaughter?

I know Bosch's work well, and he at least helps me imagine Defaulter's Hell. Shucks. Studying all that European history sure paid off - I now know what student lending hell looks like.