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The Debt Trap
- How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's Summary
AN NPR AND NEW YORK POST BEST BOOK OF 2021
From acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, the “devastating account” (The Wall Street Journal) of student debt in America.
In 1981, a new executive at Sallie Mae took home the company’s financial documents to review. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he later told the company’s CEO. “This place is a gold mine.”
Over the next four decades, the student loan industry that Sallie Mae and Congress created blew up into a crisis that would submerge a generation of Americans in $1.5 trillion in student debt. In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the “vivid and compelling” (Chicago Tribune) untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a “monster.”
As he charts the “jaw-dropping” (Jeffrey Selingo, New York Times bestselling author of Who Gets in and Why) seventy-year history of student debt in America, Mitchell never loses sight of the countless student victims ensnared by an exploitative system that depends on their debt. Mitchell also draws alarming parallels to the housing crisis in the late 2000s, showing the catastrophic consequences student debt has had on families and the nation’s future. Mitchell’s character-driven narrative is “necessary reading” (The New York Times) for anyone wanting to understand the central economic issue of our day.
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What listeners say about The Debt Trap
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-20-21
Great great great
As a person who pay on student loans over a period of years, now I am aware the problem is not me but the greediness of universities and government. Shame on the people we are supposed to trust.
5 people found this helpful
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- Eve
- 06-06-23
A must read for all future college students and parents
I had no idea how systemic and complex the college debt is in this country. It’s alarming and concerning what awaits us if this isn’t corrected immediately. I learned a great deal from this well researched and outlined book. I will be recommending this book.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-09-23
I had no idea!
Having graduated in 1989 with a small loan balance, I was fortunate to pay no more than $81 a month for 10 years to repay my student loans. I never understood what the issue was with the student debt crisis until a coworker who graduated in 2017 explained how debt was impacting her life. I began to ask other individuals of various ages if they still had debt. I was quite surprised at the number of people over 50 years old who had very large balances remaining because they were barely covering their interest payments. I sought out more information and found this wonderfully informative book. I was fascinated and consumed it within two days. The narrator was well-suited for communicating non-fiction information. The book read like a novel, with no dry spells boring the audience with lists of facts and figures that put you to sleep. Highly recommend this book if you know nothing of the realities of the school debt situation.
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- Richard Spitaleri Jr.
- 02-14-23
Not a bad read….
Interesting back story of how the modern student loans came to be but I didn’t learn as much as I expected. And frankly would have liked to learn more about the back room dealing and less about the mundane anecdotes the author spends excessive time on. Expected to learn about how the student loan industry benefited from LIBOR manipulation but it’s not even mentioned. Author also leaves out any mention of the heavy hand Joe Biden played in creating the mess. Still a worthwhile read if you have a particular interest in the subject. If not, skip it.
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- A. Winter
- 08-13-22
If you have student loans, read this, and get mad as hell.
Informative and enraging, this book highlights all the reasons why student loans in America are just another way to keep the working class struggling. I’ve lived a pretty honest life but, I have only one regret, and its taking student loans out. They are financial cancer and will prevent you from living a full life if your balance gets high enough. This is a great way to educate yourself.
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- William G. Stuart
- 02-26-22
An Excellent History of Student Debt
Student debt is one of the most contentious topics in today's political debates. People on one side of the issue want to eliminate much or all student debt because they believe that students were essentially hoodwinked into taking out loans with promises of higher future income that often didn't materialize. People on the other side argue for personal responsibility, noting that many people make bad financial decisions (homes that lose value, cars that don't last beyond payments, investing in a business that fails) and proposing that all debtors assume responsibility for their obligations.
This book provides some excellent perspective. It delivers a history of government involvement in (whether regulating, encouraging, or underwriting) student loans for post-secondary education. It documents the cozy relationship between the federal government and campus financial-aid offices in encouraging students and their families to borrow more and more to attend the school of the students' choice. It explains how the Obama Administration encourage everyone collecting unemployment benefits during the 2008-09 recession to borrow money to go back to school to learn new vocational and professional skills.
Do you want to be armed with the historical facts to understand and participate in the debate over whether to discharge student debt? (Note: I don't use the term "forgive" because that implies that the party to whom money is owed is willing to take the hit for non-payment, whereas in this situation the taxpayers, not the politicians, will pay the bill.) If so, you'll have a hard time understanding and contributing if you don't grasp the information in this book.
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- Chuck
- 12-05-21
Relevant and to the point
Good to see the whole story. Bankers and big whigs got paid billions to snowball the size of the tuitions and loans into grotesque colossus situations. All of this is many times over in excess of what even the most responsible and tight budgeted people could possibly ever pay in a lifetime.
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- Chris J. Mcdonald
- 11-20-21
stay out a debt at all costs
read this before taking student loans. share it with people considering it. Definitely a good read.
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In the spirit of Evicted, Bait and Switch, and The Big Short, a shocking, heart-wrenching investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern-day robber barons who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working and middle class - among them, Donald Trump and his inner circle.
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Amazing book - I hope it changes things and mobilizes people to take action!
- By WeaverDreams on 10-20-19
By: Aaron Glantz
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Third World America
- How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
- By: Arianna Huffington
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.
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Sad... but with a ray of hope
- By Maciej on 10-20-10
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The Whiteness of Wealth
- How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans - and How We Can Fix It
- By: Dorothy A. Brown
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why.
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Thought provoking and very accessible
- By Simone on 05-16-21
By: Dorothy A. Brown
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Who Stole the American Dream?
- By: Hedrick Smith
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In his best-selling The Russians, Hedrick Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington’s corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell’s provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today.
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Informative, enraging, and disturbing
- By Face on 12-27-12
By: Hedrick Smith
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Beyond Outrage
- What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix Them
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert B. Reich
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert B. Reich urges Americans to get beyond mere outrage about the nation’s increasingly concentrated wealth and corrupt politics in order to mobilize and to take back our economy and democracy. Americans can’t rely only on getting good people elected, Reich argues, because nothing positive happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington are organized to help make those things happen after the election. But in order to be effectively mobilized, we need to see the big picture.
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Falls short
- By J. Klinghoffer on 11-04-13
By: Robert B. Reich
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Aftershock
- The Next Economy and America’s Future
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert Reich
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of 12 acclaimed books, Robert B. Reich is a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and has served in three national administrations. While many blamed Wall Street for the financial meltdown, Aftershock points a finger at a national economy in which wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top - and where a grasping middle class simply does not have the resources to remain viable.
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Very plausible assessment of our economy
- By CAR TOP CAMPER on 10-06-10
By: Robert B. Reich
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American Dreams
- Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone
- By: Marco Rubio
- Narrated by: Ricardo Suri
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Marco Rubio's parents came to the United States in 1956. The country they found was truly a land of opportunity, where hardworking people with grade school educations could afford a home, a car, and college for their kids. A country where maids and bartenders could raise doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and maybe even a US senator. That was the American Dream - our country's central promise to its people.
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Comprehensive and compelling path for renewal.
- By gary on 06-03-15
By: Marco Rubio
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Back to Work
- Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy
- By: Bill Clinton
- Narrated by: Bill Clinton
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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President Bill Clinton gives us his views on the challenges facing the United States today and why government matters - presenting his ideas on restoring economic growth, energy, job creation, financial responsibility, resolving the mortgage crisis, and financial responsibility, and offering a plan to get us "back in the future business".
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"anti-ideological" work crippled by ideology
- By Stephen on 11-22-11
By: Bill Clinton
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The Real Crash
- America's Coming Bankruptcy - How to Save Yourself and Your Country
- By: Peter D. Schiff
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Real Crash, New York Times best-selling author Peter D. Schiff argues that America is enjoying a government-inflated bubble, one that reality will explode... with disastrous consequences for the economy and for each of us. Schiff demonstrates how the infusion of billions of dollars of stimulus money has only dug a deeper hole: The United States government simply spends too much and does not collect enough money to pay its debts, and in the end, Americans from all walks of life will face a crushing consequence.
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Important Book with Somewhat Misleading Title
- By John on 07-08-12
By: Peter D. Schiff
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Tailspin
- The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall - and Those Fighting to Reverse It
- By: Steven Brill
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values - meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself - have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction.
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Shorter would have been Better
- By Joseph on 06-12-18
By: Steven Brill
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Greedy Bastards
- Corporate Communists, Banksters, and the Other Vampires Who Suck America Dry
- By: Dylan Ratigan
- Narrated by: Dylan Ratigan
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell. Infuriated by government corruption and corporate communism, incensed by banksters shaking down taxpayers, and despairing of an ailing health care system, an age-old dependency on foreign oil, and a failing educational system, Ratigan sees an America that has allowed itself to be swindled and robbed. In this book, his first, he rips the lid off our deeply crooked system—and offers a way out.
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Like Rattigan, Full Of Drama, Not Much Substance
- By BruceK on 03-19-12
By: Dylan Ratigan
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This Fight Is Our Fight
- The Battle to Save America's Middle Class
- By: Elizabeth Warren
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Warren
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The fiery US senator from Massachusetts and best-selling author offers a passionate, inspiring book about why our middle class is under siege and how we can win the fight to save it.
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An angry rant, not that informative
- By Havi Wingfield on 05-09-17
By: Elizabeth Warren
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A Crisis Wasted
- Barack Obama's Defining Decisions
- By: Reed Hundt
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is the compelling story of President Obama’s domestic policy decisions made between September 2008 and his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Unlike all other presidents except Abraham Lincoln - who decided not to allow slavery to expand westward before he was sworn in - Barack Obama determined the fate of his presidency before he took office. The results of these fateful decisions led to Donald Trump taking his place eight years later. This book describes how and why these decisions were made, and discusses whether the outcomes could have been different.
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Somewhat complicated, not audiobook material
- By Mariana Nolasco on 09-20-20
By: Reed Hundt