At the same time, the private loan industry, which would have collapsed without a government rescue last year, has begun lobbying aggressively to save a program that has generated giant profits with very little risk.
“The administration has decided that it wants to capture the profits of federal student loans,” said Kevin Bruns, executive director of America’s Student Loan Providers, a trade group that is fighting Mr. Obama’s plan.
To press its case, the nation’s largest student lender, Sallie Mae, has hired two prominent lobbyists, Tony Podesta, whose brother, John, led the Obama transition, and Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.
The US is hardly a location of unfettered capitalism and "market economics." Note that in this case the private businesses are trying to keep going a kind of public/private initiative where the public only optioin is cheaper and more effective.
Dumping PFI and all other "market" measures in public policy - where these mean in effect guaranteed profits based on no risk and under-paying workers - needs to become basic to a left revival in the UK.
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