I wish I could show it to you in all of it’s splendor. The complete 245-acre, private, 18-hole golf course that apparently comes complete with its own clubhouse, practice ranges, and even cottages for friends and family.
I heard on NPR this morning that Albert Lord, former chairman of Sallie Mae, built it to be breathtakingly beautiful. The problem is there aren’t any pictures—none that I can find anyway. It’s very private.
According to the Baltimore Sun, he built it because he hates driving to the wealthy country clubs... and he hates their rules. (Did you know rich clubs won’t let you wear golf shoes in the parking lot?) So he just built his own damn course. While exclusive country clubs in the nation cost hundreds of thousands per year, that’s for poor chumps like Donald Trump. Real estate isn’t where the money is.
It’s your student debt.
If you are burdened with thousands or tens of thousands in student debt, and can’t find employment, I just wanted you to assure you that Wall Street is making very good use of your money.
It wasn’t always like this. Sallie Mae used to be a government entity that serviced federal education loans. It became something awful when the dutiful villains—the GOP—took control of Congress in 1994. Back in the 1990s, Clinton wanted to eliminate the middlemen and have the government provide direct loans to students. The GOP Congress threatened to kill the loan program unless Clinton privatized Sallie Mae. He agreed in order to save the direct loan program.
What happened next is sickening.
Sallie Mae, under Albert Lord, paid colleges to drop out of the federal program and make Sallie Mae the loan provider. It put their own employees in university call centers as if the students were getting advice from college loan officers. It lavished exotic trips on college financial officers.
It didn’t matter that their terms sucked compared to the direct loan program. It didn’t matter that interest could skyrocket if you missed a payment. The direct loan program never stood a chance.
Albert Lord “built Sallie Mae into a financial colossus through fees, interest and commissions on billions of dollars of federally guaranteed student loans.” Sallie Mae became fully private in 2004. The very next year, it was one of 53 entities that contributed the maximum George W. Bush’s second inauguration of 250k.
Privatization was very, very good for them.
But it sucked for the students.
Student debt today is a $140 billion-a-year industry.
And unlike medical debt or credit card debt, except in the rarest of circumstances, you cannot declare bankruptcy. That was a nugget slid into law by Rep. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. (Sallie Mae made a nice donation to Graham.) That’s one reason student debt is so lucrative—students have no options. Contractors are expected to make more than $2 billion in commissions from the government this year.
They can garnish your wages… even your social security payments.
And you can’t even get a picture of the golf course you built.