Posts tagged 'Student Loans'

Student lending vs the housing bubble

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

Learn more

| Subscribe to Cardiff's posts
| Apr 15 20:44 | Comment |

 Read more

Damn straight I’m a college grad! Paper or plastic?

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Lisa's posts
| Mar 04 20:02 | Comment |

It’s the kind of motto one sees on a T-shirt in a shop in the touristy part of town, but over the last few years it’s had a particularly painful ring of truth to it. Students in America are staying in education longer and are struggling to obtain full, gainful employment once they leave. This, combined with the rising costs of tuition, has seen the outstanding balance of student debt go past the one trillion mark and delinquency rates increase.

Talk is in the air of a bubble, as pundits point to student loans themselves and to the securities that are built from them. But is what’s going on “a bubble” in the usual sense? And more importantly, what does this say about college education in America? Read more

Trading in America’s students expands

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Lisa's posts
| Mar 04 17:42 | Comment |

Alright, we put our hands up, we’ve been reading Zero Hedge.

His Anonymous Handsome Midriffness is busy being his usual self, and on this topic he’s made us go hmmm about a certain Wall Street Journal story concerning SecondMarket Holdings, Inc. The platform is launching a service that will allow lenders to sell exposure in student loans to (accredited) investors. The WSJ describes it thus (emphasis ours): Read more

Having toilet-papered a tree, students move on to trash ABS market

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Lisa's posts
| Mar 04 16:57 | Comment |

Evidently it’s time to get very excited about the risks posed by increasing student debt in the US, particularly as rates of delinquency are on the rise. Pretty graphs first, details follow…

Holy household debt, Batman! Student loan balances have surpassed credit card use and are still growing! Read more

Student Loan In-securities

| Jul 13 2012 18:10 | Comment |

As the topic of student loans has been gaining momentum this election year, it might be worth taking a moment to examine some not-so-rosy points about the whole business.

First some background. In the world of US student loans, Uncle Sam reigns supreme. A recent research note by Credit Suisse noted that since the abolition of the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) in 2010, the government has become owner of an estimated 88% of total outstanding student debt. Read more

The coming firesale of student loan ABS

| Jul 22 2011 19:24 | Comment |

The potential contents of a firesale if there is a downgrade of the US’s AAA rating are receiving a fair bit of attention, as investment funds weigh up what they can and should do in the event.

Defeased or prefunded securities are uniquely vulnerable and, according to a note out Thursday by Citigroup’s securitised products team, so are the $250bn of asset backed securities linked to the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Read more

Things affected by a US downgrade

Tracy Alloway used to be deputy editor of FT Alphaville. Here she learned the details of derivatives, the absurdities of accounting and the various structures of ... erm ... structured finance. She now covers big US banks for the FT paper, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. She pops up on FT Alphaville every once in a while.

Learn more

| Subscribe to Tracy's posts
| Jul 04 2011 15:29 | Comment |

The list comes to us from Moody’s, which looks at the possible ratings impact of a US sovereign downgrade in Monday’s structured finance quick check. Now the credit rating agency has said before that it will place the US government’s triple-A rating on review for downgrade if there’s no “demonstrable progress” on the debt ceiling talks. Unsurprisingly, a downgrade of the US would have a ripple effect on a number of other assets which are directly linked to the fortunes of the States.

Let’s get the quirky stuff out of the way first. The Israeli bonds, we think, are USAID bonds issued by the State of Israel in the early 2000s and fully guaranteed by the USA. The Egyptian bond is another US-guaranteed issue apparently done earlier this year in an effort to plug Egypt’s budget gap after the spring uprising. Read more

For-profit colleges live to default another day

| Jun 02 2011 17:03 | Comment |

This is what a collective sigh of relief in the for-profit college sector looks like:

 Read more

Further further reading

| Apr 14 2011 21:45 | Comment |

For the commute home, where you always over-deliver on expectations,

- Google misses earnings expectations. Read more

“Gainful Employment” survives shutdown negotiations

| Apr 11 2011 20:37 | Comment |

And we’re not just talking about national zookeepers.

Here’s a Steve Eisman-friendly tidbit from the government shutdown negotiations, courtesy of the Higher Ed Watch blog on Saturday: Read more

Student loans: debt, defaults and delinquents

| Mar 22 2011 15:03 | Comment |

The Everest for-profit education network says of a decision to attend one of its colleges: “It’s a decision that deserves respect.”

Perhaps — but it’s definitely risky. Read more

The biggish short — subprime student loans

| Jan 25 2011 19:06 | Comment |

“Hello, my name is Steven Eisman.”

“Hi Steve, we loved the Big Short. Thanks for your email — yes, let’s grab a coffee and discuss why you’re shorting the for-profit college industry.”*   (*FT Alphaville translation.) Read more