--jks
>
>>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
>
>
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