On the page today, Olivia Rosane chides John McCain for what little he has to say about student loan reform:
In addition, McCain only addresses the issue of college loans by vowing to make sure they are accessible. With two-thirds of students graduating in debt, accessibility to college loans isn’t the issue.
This is a legitimate point, although Rosane only alludes to why: one of the causes of the current financial mess was the absurd accessibility of loans that people simply couldn’t pay back. But because the economy depends so much upon a functioning private credit system, accessibility has to be tempered by certain internal and external checks against rampant, even irrational lending: checks like market regulation, sensible interest rates, consumer restraint, saving, etc. Accessibility is a great idea, but with micro-level financial decision-making resulting in macro-level chaos, the question is what kind of accessibility we actually want.
McCain hasn’t really addressed this yet. Indeed, his stance on the subsidized, “guaranteed” student loan system is all but unknown a little over a week before the election. But we know Obama’s position. And it is worrisome indeed.