Student Loan scandle, criminal acts swept under the rug?

The Higher Ed Watch blog,
http://www.newamerica.net/blog/higher-ed-watch/2009/sweeping-scandal-under-rug-15305

Sweeping the Student Loan Scandal Under the Rug
Stephen Burd -
October 13, 2009 - 10:45am
The student loan industry must think we all have very short memories. As part of their effort to derail legislation that would eliminate the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, lenders have been sharing talking points with Senators and staff arguing that the "pay for play" scandles that engulfed the student loan industry in 2007 were much ado about nothing.

“After thorough investigations by Congress and various state Attorneys General, there were no findings that any employee or a lending institution or school broke any laws, nor were there any criminal penalties levied,” lenders wrote in talking points -- Which Higher Ed has obtained -- that were distributed to Senate staff.

While that statement may have been technically true at the time it was first made, it’s a brazen sweeping under the rug of a scandal that outraged the American public, particularly college students and their parents. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo did charge about a dozen colleges and lenders, such as loan giants Sallie Mae and Nelnet, with violating federal and state laws, and filed lawsuits against them. But instead of fighting Cuomo, the student loan companies and schools quickly reached settlement agreements with his office that required them to change their conduct. In other words, they were not confident enough about the legality of their practices to defend them in court.

Read the entire article on their webpage. The fact is this is nothing less that further exploitation of students. This is why, although I support Alan Collinge's call for restoration of Consumer protections on ALL student loans, I also can only support the total elimination of the US governments participation in all student loan industry activities. THis means NO loans, no subsidies and no guarentees. Nothing. The US government must withdraw from the student loan mess, beacause all it has done is allowed preadatory companies, (schools, lenders and service providers) to exploit students, for over 30 years.