creative financing

[Maureen Anderson]

>Credit fraud is a crime, as is mail fraud and wire fraud. I'd advise 
>aaginst committing it. You can go to jail. --jks

Now, now Justin: despite painstaking efforts to assure that I was 
engaging in an Abstract Thought Exercise, you're just determined to 
read it as a practical query.  But exploring the dynamics of our 
political-financial system is one of lbo-talk's raisons d'etre and in 
that spirit I invited theoretical analysis of a fascinating 
confluence of social facts. 

Social fact  1: credit card companies are currently thrusting 
exorbitant credit limits upon segments of the population. 
	For instance I regularly receive unsolicited "rewards," 
amounting to tens of thousands of dollars of credit, for my 
"financial responsibility."  After getting their approving dad-like 
pat on the head I get the siren songs, of the dream vacation in Bora 
Bora that I uniquely deserve, the house addition to that'll make me 
complete, etc.  (Of course what they won't tell me, have killed 
congressional proposals trying to make them tell me, is how many 
years at their interest rate it would take to pay back my carpe diem 
expenditures.)  They've sent me all these credit increases at the 
same time that my income has almost qualified for Earned Income 
Credits.

Social fact 2: the present structure of higher education makes it 
increasingly likely that students, especially graduate students in 
humanities and social sciences, will accrue enormous student loan 
debt.

Social fact 3: institutional structures (to say nothing of moral 
ones) mitigate strongly against reneging on gov't student loans.

Social fact 4: the student population likely to be highly indebted by 
gov't loans correlates highly with the segment of the population 
receiving high credit limits from the bottom-feeding credit card 
companies.

This array of social facts present interesting material for social 
analysis.   My theoretical understanding of the finance system and 
its mutual imbrications in the sociopolitical realm would be enlarged 
if anyone here could indicate possible institutional factors or 
regulatory procedures that might mitigate against the elective 
affinity I perceive here between the confluence of social facts 
enumerated above, and the possibility of a segment of the student 
population choosing to pay off their gov't loans via the funds made 
available by their credit cards, after which they might subsequently 
and regrettably feel compelled to file for bankruptcy.

inquiring social analytical minds wanna know, 
Maureen