Who benefits from student loan cancellations?
Plus: Ohio fixes its rent-control blunders; assessing the new crypto bill; and podcasts for your summer travels
Biden’s education department proposes $85 billion in new student loan cancellations: Earlier this month, the Department of Education released a set of proposed regulations that would add approximately $46 billion to the tens of billions of federal dollars already spent on student loan forgiveness. In Forbes, FREOPP Senior Fellow Preston Cooper discusses the proposal and reiterates that student debt tends to skew towards high-earning people, meaning that these provisions are unlikely to be well-targeted to those who most need relief. Rather than throwing more taxpayer money at the problem, the administration should focus on preventing bad loans in the first place. A simple place to start would be to require schools to purchase insurance against the risk of future discharges, a move that would shift significant costs from taxpayers to universities and force low-quality, uninsurable institutions out of the loan program altogether.
What about loan forgiveness for public servants? In FREOPP’s OPPBlog (subscribe for real-time updates) Preston makes the case that, in light of new data from the Department of Education, loan forgiveness is also a bad way to support the public servants–a far better policy would be to stop requiring or encouraging aspiring public servants to take on so much debt in the first place.
Ohio acts decisively to limit rent control: This summer, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed House Bill 430, legislation that blocks Ohio cities from imposing rent control measures on landlords. FREOPP Research Fellow Roger Valdez writes about the importance of this move in closing off one of the worst interventions local governments can make in the housing economy. More states should follow Ohio and the 28 other states that don’t allow rent control to be passed by local governments.
→ Roger discussed rent regulation with our friends at the Bipartisan Policy Center earlier this week. For his take on government efforts to halt rising rent prices, check out the video below, and visit BPC’s FAQ page for more highlights from Roger and other experts.
Lummis-Gillibrand crypto bill is an important step in bringing regulatory clarity to Bitcoin, stablecoins, and digital assets: For entrepreneurs and businesses looking to use cryptocurrency technologies to solve problems, operating in an uncertain regulatory environment can be an innovation killer. In that context, the digital asset bill introduced by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand brings much-needed clarity. FREOPP President Avik Roy took to Forbes to assess the bill and its efforts to create clear legal definitions and regulatory lanes for digital assets. The key takeaway? Changes to the status quo like those the bill proposes are essential for the U.S. to go from being a crypto laggard to the world leader in digital asset regulation.
Thinking about inflation while keeping the gas tank full this summer? Avik tackled the topic in two recent podcasts, discussing the relationship between Bitcoin and inflation and the implications of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate targets.
Thanks for keeping up with FREOPP, and have a great weekend!
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