Mark Knoller, via Twitter, reminds us today of Obama’s rhetoric last month on student loan nationalization:
I’m urging the Senate to pass a bill that will make college more affordable by ending the unnecessary taxpayer-subsidies that go to financial intermediaries for student loans.
This bill, nationalizing student loans, is becoming law, because it was folded into the budget reconcialition bill that served mostly as a sidecar to the health-care bill. What caught my eye here was the description of student lenders as “financial intermediaries.” I understand that this is something of a term of art, describing banks as the go-between connecting lenders (such as depositors) with borrowers (such as homebuyers or businesses).
But Obama seems to be using the term “intermediary” differently here. It seems he’s saying that with all the subsidies Washington is providing, student lenders are simply profit-taking middle-men in the whole student loans industry. And he has a point, as I’ve written.
But wait, while Obama is giving the death penalty to this industry for the crime of being a subsidized middleman, he’s throwing subsidies at every corner of the economy: insurers, drug makers, windmill makers, farmers, automakers, bankers, small businesses, shippers, exporters, battery makers, and so on.
After these businesses profit from decades of federal subsidy, will they be unnecessary “intermediaries” as well?
