Student borrowers today owe $1.3 trillion, more than double the $611 billion owed nearly nine years ago. About one in 10 student borrowers is behind on repaying the loans, the highest delinquency rate of any type of loan tracked by the New York Fed’s quarterly household debt report.
The student loan market is nowhere near the size of the $8.6 trillion mortgage market, making student borrowing less of a threat to the global financial system than the bad housing loans that touched off the financial crisis in 2008.
You can foreclose on a house. You'll get a market rate for it, less whatever inconvenience pricing you get for the foreclosure auction, lack of capital etc.
You can repossess a car. You'll get half what it's worth or less because unlike real estate, durable goods are depreciating assets.
Student loan debt? three cents on the dollar. And that's in a good market. Start seeing a lot of it and that recourse price will plummet.
It's been suggested that the market for the past six months has been buoyed up by the promise of Trump tax cuts. We've gotten to the point where any Republican agenda over the next 12 months at least is likely to be mired in scandal. And granted - we had crazy-high interest rates following Watergate which gave investors alternative investment vehicles, but this is how that market period ended:
50% correction over 5 years.
You think your parents/grandparents are gonna retire with their IRAs and 401(k)s at 30% or more down? They didn't last time. That's why millennials have the highest structural unemployment of any generation since the Great Depression. How's your student loan debt looking now?