SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Homeland
miss a payment, the scuzzy finance companies that buy the debts from universities are
allowed to jack your debt up with monster fees and penalties, so if you owe $30,000 for
college and $50,000 in credit card debt and you go bankrupt, you'll find the credit card debt
reduced or eliminated, but your student debt might grow to $150,000 after all the missedpayment
fees are tacked on. The way student debt bankruptcy laws are set up, they can
take money out of your Social Security check to pay the student loans you took out as a
teenager, even if you've already paid millions in fees and penalties.
Zyz liked the sound of this. So they took the money that was coming in from the sale of
their bonds and started buying up student debt. But not just any student debt: desperate,
miserable student debt. Debt carried by the poorest people in America, who had put themselves
into permanent hock just to try to get a better job than their parents had by getting
a degree.
These people were in trouble. Getting a college degree (or, ahem, dropping out of college)
hadn't led to them getting great jobs. They were unemployed, or working a ton of crappy
part-time jobs to make rent, and they were missing payments like crazy. They had debts
that they could never, ever pay off.
Enter Zyz. They had a dynamic, thrusting plan to get people to pay: straight-up thuggery.
Zyz knew a lot about scaring, hurting and chasing people. They had deep connections
with Homeland Security, which meant access to databases of who lived where, who they
were related to, what their tax-returns said, how much income their parents, ex-spouses,
grandparents, cousins, and school pals made. Zyz was...aggressive...about using this
information. Thrusting, even.
So far, so sleazy. But it got worse. People who owed money to Zyz started to do things
that were pretty out of character for them: a couple armed robberies, some burglaries, a
little blackmail. A bunch of them joined the military, only to be discharged for being grossly
unfit for service.
Why were they doing this? Because Zyz was providing them with “financial advice.” As in
“You'd better find some way to pay your bills, pal, or things could get very, very bad for you
and the people you love.” Zyz wasn't just a private military service, and they weren't just
high-flying financial engineers: they were the mafia.
-..-
All this was contained in a series of memos, including a bunch of letters from attorneys
general and district attorneys who'd gotten complaints from Zyz's “clients.” Zyz, of course,
denied everything, while simultaneously getting friends of theirs in state and national government,
law enforcement, and the DHS itself to keep everything calm and easy.
The most damning memo came from a San Francisco city attorney who'd heard too many
nearly identical stories from Zyz clients, and had painstakingly built a case against them,
with mountains of supporting documents (all also included in the docs), only to have her
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