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America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

governance.fyi

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Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#111
post #68
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about student loans. The entire system needs to be dismantled. Universities don't care if their majors will result in a job and the student loans are a source of risk-free money. They need to start taking on the risk of all student loan, not me, the tax payer.

Ok, but forgiving student loans doesn't do that. It signals to borrowers that they don't have to repay high loans if their career can't support it. It tells borrowers that they can make risky loans without a chance of default. It tells universities that they can keep charging exorbitant tuitions because kids can still get loans to pay them. The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy…

Why would I work hard once I found out I was going to be defaulted X years from now?

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bank depositors are not engaging in risky behavior, Because the taxpayers (and all users of USD) repeatedly bail them out. I could define anything as not being risky if I knew taxpayers would bail it out. More importantly, if there is no risk, what purpose does a bank serve? They’re a pretty bloated middleman if their sole purpose is to update a database to reflect incoming and outgoing cash flow. The government sh…

The FDIC insures $200k of deposits because banks are not supposed to be risky. Thats taxpayers bailing out everybody in order to keep banks as "not risky" In particular the article incorrectly states that the bank was bailed out. It was not. The bank failed. Depositors who were running their non-profit in the Bay Area did not lost all their charitable contributions. The bank failed because it had placed deposits into…

> When Peter Thiel started a bank run by telling all his investments to pull their funds, that exposed the SCB mismanagement.

I think he did more than that. He either has precognition Nostradamus would be proud of or he absolutely had insider information, and a good amount of it.

1. He knew that when the bank closure would be, because despite how the FDIC has very detailed and historically very successful efforts at keeping such plans highly confidential (for obvious reasons), like agents in hotels under fake names, etc., he told his investments on Wednesday night that "all funds must be out of SVB by COB Thursday". FDIC rolled into SVB 8am Friday morning.

2. He had also had instructed another of his companies to build a website and app that was able to handle applications for business bridge loans, and it "needed to be tested, and ready to go live, by noon on Friday".

Also, not for nothing, causing a bank run is a federal felony.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#113

> Larry Summers warned against “moral hazard lectures” and demanded SVB depositors be made whole immediately in 2023, months after calling student loan relief inflationary and unfair. Moral hazard for borrowers, bailouts for banks. Not lost on the public. I can't believe I'm about to say something that could be construed as a defense of Larry Summers, but here goes: bank depositors are not engaging in risky behavior,…

> And as some of who supports the student loan forgiveness, yes, it is slightly inflationary but I think the benefits out weigh the inflationary effects.

Being slightly inflationary is a strawman concern. Student loan forgiveness has a major problem in that it’s a large reward the goes only to a specific slice of society who match some arbitrary criteria and who have useful degrees. It also fails to address the root cause of the problem, letting current generations accumulate debt in the same way.

It’s an idea that appeals to a subset of the voter base for whom a college graduate with loan debt represents the prototypical struggling young person, but ignores all of the young people who are even worse off and don’t have college degrees either.

Spending a huge amount of money to forgive student loans would be politically catastrophic in ways that a lot of people who live in highly educated middle class bubbles don’t realize. There are a lot of people struggling out there, but college graduates are not at the top of the list of people who need the most help.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#114
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you believe universities have taken advantage of students by crafting, encouraging and financing education programs with an understanding that those programs would not result in jobs which would be sufficient to repay the debt needed to complete them, but you think the 18 year olds who were taken advantage of should be forced to suffer for their failure to make perfect decisions at 18. Cool. Cool.

So you believe uninvolved taxpayers should be on the hook when the 18 year olds make bad decisions. Cool cool.

Should post grad be funded by the government? Yes. Next question.

Feel like I'm answering whether or not public schools should be a thing from some 19th century peasant.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#115
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about student loans. The entire system needs to be dismantled. Universities don't care if their majors will result in a job and the student loans are a source of risk-free money. They need to start taking on the risk of all student loan, not me, the tax payer.

I agree with you about student loan forgiveness, but disagree with your assessment of universities as a system. The humanities (which are highly profitable for the university) are suffering an existential crisis because their funding keeps getting cut, while STEM programs (which have low or even negative ROI after lab/equipment/resource costs) keep getting expanded. There's obviously more nuance to that, but at a hig…

How about clawbacks from the universities.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#116
post #39

> Larry Summers warned against “moral hazard lectures” and demanded SVB depositors be made whole immediately in 2023, months after calling student loan relief inflationary and unfair. Moral hazard for borrowers, bailouts for banks. Not lost on the public. I can't believe I'm about to say something that could be construed as a defense of Larry Summers, but here goes: bank depositors are not engaging in risky behavior,…

One round of loan forgiveness is fine, but it builds an expectation of it in the future. All of the loans, growing larger and larger, just encourage universities to grow fatter and raise costs to students. If students could not borrow enough to attend, they would be forced to lower costs (not necessarily the very top universities, but all the rest).

> encourage universities to grow fatter

In a typical state school, where's most of the fat accumulating? What could be cut significantly without affecting the quality of education?

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#117
post #96
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One round of loan forgiveness is fine, but it builds an expectation of it in the future. All of the loans, growing larger and larger, just encourage universities to grow fatter and raise costs to students. If students could not borrow enough to attend, they would be forced to lower costs (not necessarily the very top universities, but all the rest).

I think the point wound be to eliminate all borrowing for tuition. It would be drastic and universities would complain the whole time but band-aid has to be ripped off at some point. I don't think a solution other than welding shut the money font will have a meaningful effect. * Eliminate the entire federal student loan program. Just gone. No more loans. * Make it so that private loans for tuition and related expense…

Your solution means that only the wealthy can attend university, someone who grew up poor wouldn’t stand a chance.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#118
post #68
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about student loans. The entire system needs to be dismantled. Universities don't care if their majors will result in a job and the student loans are a source of risk-free money. They need to start taking on the risk of all student loan, not me, the tax payer.

Ok, but forgiving student loans doesn't do that. It signals to borrowers that they don't have to repay high loans if their career can't support it. It tells borrowers that they can make risky loans without a chance of default. It tells universities that they can keep charging exorbitant tuitions because kids can still get loans to pay them. The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy…

Student loans currently carry no risk. They can't be discharged. Interest is the payment to the lender to accept risk. There is no risk in the current state of student loans. Therefore they should never-ever charge interest.

Also schools need to be reigned in, if GA et al can pay each student athlete $40,000 a month, they MUST be held accountable for burdening the students and the state with unscrupulous debt.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the thing you want to ban isn't well-defined.

But do you agree that there are a set of bad actors who fall under the (not well-defined) term of "private equity"? Is this a definitional quibble or do you not believe there is a problem?

I accept there's a problem. I don't believe there's a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. It'll take years, possibly decades, of regulatory and anti-trust work across every industry. Tons of political will and capital.

Re: America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital

#120

> Larry Summers warned against “moral hazard lectures” and demanded SVB depositors be made whole immediately in 2023, months after calling student loan relief inflationary and unfair. Moral hazard for borrowers, bailouts for banks. Not lost on the public. I can't believe I'm about to say something that could be construed as a defense of Larry Summers, but here goes: bank depositors are not engaging in risky behavior,…

larry summers? the epstein guy?
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