Tag Archives: debt

Dear Credit Collectors: Please Stop Calling Me As I’m Not the Droids You’re Looking For

Business, , , , , ,

Okay, here’s my little piece of advice for credit collectors: If you’ve been calling a phone number for the last two years for “Munro, Alexander” and the person who answers the phone is NOT Munro, Alexander, doesn’t know Munro, Alexander, and has never heard of “Munro, Alexander”, STOP CALLING BACK. Statistical analysis indicates that the probability of finding said Munro, Alexander is not going to increase if you call 300 times, 700 times, or never. The reality of the situation is that Munro, Alexander DOES NOT LIVE HERE. So stop calling for him.

Unfortunately, I do not have a phone that can be blocked, so they call it nonstop. I get two to three phone messages on my phone for this same guy. I’ve talked to them and told them to stop calling (they promise not to), called up their offices and said same, but nothing seems to make a difference. They won’t stop calling me.

This wouldn’t be as bad if this was the only one, but I also get calls for all sorts of other random people who may or may not have had my phone number somewhere in the past. I am so sick and tired of wanting to answer my phone only to get another one of these morons on the other end of the phone.

The Munro, Alexander one is even worse now because they no longer have a person on the other end of the line but a recording that says: “If you are not Munro, Alexander, please hang up. Otherwise, you are indicating that you Munro, Alexander, and this call is for you.” This is a message that is left on my answering machine, so of course NO ONE HUNG UP. No one was on the freaking line to hang up.

Government keeps saying they’re going to do something about this, but they never do because I suspect these companies have lobbyists that keep any normal politician from passing legislation that ships them to Siberia for the rest of their natural lives, a punishment overly warranted by the abuse the rest of us have to go through.

I’m just saying.

Talking About Student Loans Is Pandering; Doing Something About Student Loans Is Progress

Business, Economics, Education, Politics, , , , , ,

The latest appeal to the votes of young people involves the student loan crisis. President Obama has started to “talk” about student loans to show that he’s paying attention to young people issues. Mitt Romney is talking about student loans to show that he’s not overlooking the issue either. Students (or former students with debt) are thinking, hey, they’re finally paying attention to an issue that’s near and dear to me.

Fact: They’re not. In fact, what both the president and his opponent are doing is called pandering. Pandering is when someone talks about an issue that is important to people, but in reality, they’re not actually going to do anything substantial about it. They might, if forced into a corner, make some minor stride, but when pandering, the point is to show that you care without actually really caring.

Obama mentioned yesterday that he just recently paid off his student loans. So young people should understand that he “feels” your pain. No, he doesn’t. He’s a one percenter who is filthy rich and will never have to worry about paying off a loan again in his lifetime. He mentioned he paid off his loans 8 years ago. 8 years ago, he was in the Senate, which meant he was in a position that allowed him almost unlimited access to the abilty to paying off his debt. THAT is how he paid off his student loans. Not through some great government assistance that came to his rescue. Unless you consider that government assistance to be a position in the Senate.

And Romney talking about student loans is just a filthy rich billionaire who doesn’t give a flying crap about people in debt. He made his money off of other people, and when people do that, they don’t care about the struggles of others, especially when your company that made you rich makes a mint off of people who are struggling anyway.

What’s of more concern here is the fact that so many of us are overwhelmed with student loan debt that we may never be able to pay off in our lifetimes. Generally, the response of the rest of society (usually from people who are well off and have never had to really suffer under any real debt) is that it’s all our own fault for going into debt, that we’re a bunch of lazy young people who need to go get a job, or some other innane banter that unravels once you actually start thinking about it.

Neither President Obama nor Citizen Romney have any intentions of doing anything to upset the apple cart of student loan debt that so many banks are profiting off these days. Government looks after the wealthy and the banks, not students or common citizens. Instead, government panders to the common people, throws them table scraps and then pretends they really care.

Expect more of this kind of drivel leading up to the Election of 2012. Neither Congress nor the President is going to enact anything that really helps students. Keeping a loan rate at a lower interest rate ISN’T assisting anyone in any great way as the debt still exists, the balance continues to increase, and nothing actually got any better. It’s just more of the same, kind of like “keeping Bush’s tax cuts” is somehow supposed to “create jobs” by doing exactly what we’ve been doing before when somehow that wasn’t leading to the creation of jobs in the past, but is somehow going to lead to a surplus of jobs that logical economics can’t seem to figure out how to make happen.

What would solve the student loan problem? Mass forgiveness of debt, kind of like people have been advocating for forclosures, which are forgiven through bankruptcy. The problem with student loan debt is that bankruptcy does NOTHING to assist someone. If you fall under, you fall under for life, and you’ll never get back out under it because the lobbyist groups that put our government people in power were on the side of banks that wanted to screw over students with student loan debt. Think about this for a moment. You can gamble away every cent you might ever borrow from a bank and be forgiven, but if one dime of that was in student loan debt, you’re screwed. As long as that one issue remains, no politician is ever going to help out the little guy. Why not? Because they honestly don’t care.

If they tell you they do care, they’re pandering. Remember that because no one else is going to tell you that. Instead, the media will tell us what a great job both sides are doing at “caring about” the problem by doing absolutely nothing but painting over the broken foundation.