figure out how to pay this loan back in the current economic environment. that s not the case, is it? no. 10, 11 million job openings still out there. quite a few jobs out there. if we cancel $10,000 of student loan debt, that s the equivalent of extra $900 in stimulus payments to every borrower. that is inflationary. you re cancelling payments. you re cancelling student loan debt. if we postpone bringing the payments back online that will be inflationary. that s stimulus as well. martha: so here s mr. bernstein from the white house who i spoke with, jared bernstein. yesterday or the day before. let s take a look at what he had to say. there s been a lot of commentary raised about potential inflationary effect of debt cancellation. what you have to do when you measure this out is look at debt cancellation but also look at debt restart. that is the end of the pause,
hard. student loan debt relief consumes resources that would be better used helping those that did not for whatever reason have a chance to attend college and tends to be inflationary by raising tuition. are you planning to give student loan relief? is that in the white house plan? the reason i get to come out here and have he these great talks with you because i make a practice of not getting ahead of president biden. we will leave any announcement in that area to president biden. there s a lot of commentary about inflationary effects. what you have to do is look at debt cancellation but look at debt restart. that is the end of the pause, restarting payments. both of those have to be factored in when you try to understand the fiscal impact on overall inflation. and they push in opposite directions. martha: with all due respect, the spending programs that have been launched by this administration has led to high
look at debt cancellation and debt restart. the pause and restarting payments. the treasury secretary larry summers disagrees. he says student loan forgiveness increases inflation. the administration is flirting with complete student loan forgiveness. the washington post reports the department of education is working on an idea called the fresh start initiative that would bring about 7.5 million borrowers that are behind on payments out of default, scrub their credit history so the incident doesn t show up and make them eligible to take out more loans. republicans are calling this idea crazy. virginia fox saying this. it s literally the definition of insanity and also wrong. if these individuals were unable to pay back their loans the first time they borrowed, how will giving them access to more debt help? neil, student loan forgiveness only benefits about 13% of