The Atlantic’s Daniel Indiviglio put together the killer chart showingstudent loans rising 511% in just over a decade. The Atlantic figured the total of outstanding student loans at $550 billion. Reuter’s Felix Salmon points out that’s too low. A widely repeatedUSA Today story said student loans would reach $1 trillion this year. That’s closer (federally guaranteed loans alone exceed the Atlantic’s $550 billion), though, as Salmon shows, USA Today seems to be badly confused about the source of that $1 trillion.
More interesting than the total number, though, is how it will get repaid. The New York Fed has put together a beautiful (read: ugly) map of student loan delinquencies, which nationally stand at 10.6% of loans. You can get a rough sense of it here, with the darker colors showing greater defaults. But to get the full force of it you shouldclick through to the New York Fed site and tap the student loans tab. Roll over the darker counties and you’ll see delinquency rates of more than 20%. Across the Southeast you can see a belt of bad student loans forming, much like the foreclosure belt that stretched across the Southwest.