Student loans....

There is much to say about the debate/discussion currently taking place regarding student loan debt.  I'll say more in a later post, but for now, let's take a look at some data Mike Konczal has over at his new blog (see here).

So the first fact that we should recognize is this:  students are borrowing a much higher percentage of the total cost of college as a result of the significant reduction in state and federal support (read grants!).  I'm making no evaluation of this fact yet, but it needs to be recognized by anyone engaged in a discussion about student loan debt.

Info from the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta

Philadelphia Fed sees state economies improving

The Philadelphia Fed's (see here) February 2012 leading economic indicators shows improving economies in most states (see map below).

The housing problem continues

The housing problem continues to haunt the economy (see graph below from CoreLogic).  Jared Bernstein notes the following (see here):

A key variable here is the share of total sales that are distressed.  As the figure below shows, that share was falling a few months ago, but it’s started growing again, and as long as a) it’s growing and b) the price of distressed sales is falling, the national price will continue to fall and we’ll be doing slightly worse than bumping along the bottom.