Opinion
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(LifeSiteNews) — Given that the usurper-in-chief has, with executive action, canceled more than $17 billion in student loans for half a million Americans, I’m not alone in regretting all those rice and bean dinners my wife and I ate. We were lucky to have found Dave Ramsey as newlyweds (and newly graduated adults) in 2007, and we adhered to some parts of his program with vigor. Living on a strict cash budget, we divided our limited funds between various envelopes – one for groceries, one for gas, one for utilities, and of course the empty one for travel and entertainment. We paid our smallest debts first, becoming addicted to the thrill of debt elimination in our early twenties. 

Granted, our student debt loads weren’t as high as others we knew; three of my four undergraduate tuition years were paid for by the Marine Corps (in exchange for “honorable” participation in “democratizing” parts of the Middle East Barack Obama would later deem unworthy of freedom), so I only brought a few years of debt (including graduate school) into our marriage. My resourceful, salutatorian wife managed to bring less than I. Notwithstanding, we were elated the day we were free of the student debt burden. It felt like that collegiate chapter of life was finally closed, as we moved on towards first time home ownership. 

Life is tough in the Joseph Biden / World Economic Forum / Build Back Better / New World Order economy. With inflation at generational highs, real economic growth flatlined, and essentials like housing and transportation seemingly inaccessible to the new college graduate, it makes perfect sense that Elizabeth Warren would fanatically demand Biden cancel more debt before the midterm cycle – which even Politico admits is shaping up to be disastrous for Democrats. In short, Democrats need a win to blunt the red wave headed for one of the most unpopular White Houses in recent memory. 

The so-called “forgiving” of student loans (a handy euphemism) ought to highlight the everlasting link between government and bankers. Like so much of the ostensibly private debt borrowed by millions of Americans, most people who signed promissory notes were unaware that the Chase or Wells Fargo banker sitting across from them was merely a proxy for the Leviathan in Washington. Everything from housing, small business, agriculture, and education (let alone TARP, bailout, PPP, or other “emergency” actions) are underwritten, in some cases implicitly (and others more directly), by government. 

In fact, when you start to peel back the usurious onion, there are layers of government-guaranteed debt which probably represents a quarter or a third of all debt outstanding in America. This should make us wonder why banks are capturing such a rich yield spread (the difference between the yields they charge on debt and the yields they pay on deposits). My bank gives me a generous quarter point of interest on my deposits, but thinks nothing of charging 4% on mortgages, 9% on business loans, 15% on credit cards, and so the game goes. 

We’re told banks simply must engage in usury as compensation for their risks in outlaying capital which may not be paid back. But how much risk is a bank truly taking when its loan portfolio is government-backed, its next bailout is right around the corner, and its executives are in a revolving door between Treasury, The Fed, and the “private” sector? Even the most basic, medieval origination of banking – a safe place to keep your currency – is riskless for today’s banks due to FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). 

Another issue highlighted by the Fake Catholic President’s executive action is the strangely privileged status student debt has long held in American politics, relative to other types of debt. Whereas most other debt is secured by something of value (auto loans are secured by vehicles, mortgages are secured by real property, business loans are secured by equipment or cash flow), student loans are originated for thankless, entitled sociology students who have no real job prospects post-indoctrination. Absent government underwriting, these types of loans appear to be the riskiest of any, as there’s nothing to foreclose on (save a few boxes of expired tofu, organic lamb’s wool running shoes, and some soy latte-stained pages of badly written poetry). 

So why has there been a near-constant insistence on the cancelation forgiveness of student debt, in particular, ahead of far more productive types of government-backed debt, like small business loans? Perhaps it’s the abundance of free time the under-employed, student loan saddled community organizers have to agitate their representatives. Perhaps a secular-communist college education is seen as a so-called “human right.” More likely, it’s part of the political philosophy which guides all things financial, technological, social, and cultural – learned dependency. Debt cancelation forgiveness of small business would encourage entrepreneurial growth, financial independence, hiring surges, capital investment, increased self-employment; all outcomes which are decidedly at odds with the financial new world order – learn to code, own nothing, and eat bugs.  

You cannot force communism on a self-reliant, financially independent people. Better to keep small businesses trapped in the usury cycle, while liberating newly trained feminist-Marxists therefrom, to keep the “activism” playing field unlevel. 

Questioning the relative sacrosanct status of student debt shouldn’t be interpreted as implicit consent to other forms of usury, be it secured or unsecured by underlying assets. For at least 1,000 years, usurers were denied ecclesiastical burial (along with suicides), so strict was the Church’s prohibition of charging interest on loans. In fact, even as Protestant theologian Robert Bolton noted in his 1637 discourse on usury: “These [Canaanites, Amorites, Hivites, Jesubites] the Jews were commanded to destroy, Deut 7:12. And usury was the teeth given them and allowed by God to eat them up withal.” 

In other words, usuary is an act of war. It is an effective weapon system designed to annihilate its victims. Scripture condemns it, ecclesiastical precepts deter it, and yet modern life seems to require it. As Michael Hoffman notes in his book Usury in Christendom, The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, “Charging interest on loans of money to Christians, or for that matter to any neighbor, turns the whole world into a population of strangers.” Debt forgiveness isn’t without its precedent; the Jewish Jubilee year, as described in Leviticus, was marked by the cancellation of all debts. It’s clear that God doesn’t wish His people to labor their whole lives as debt slaves. Nor does He either want alt-left Senators from Massachusetts picking and choosing who does and doesn’t get a Jubilee. 

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