From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is a daily.

Today.

For the past two years, the US government has allowed tens of millions of Americans to stop

paying their student loans, a policy that was extended a little over a week ago.

I spoke with my colleague, Stacy Cowley, about the unintended consequences of this historic

experiment in debt deferral and the dilemma it's posing for the president.

This Monday, April 18th.

Stacy, I want to start at 10,000 feet with the current scope of the problem here.

Where are we right now when it comes to student debt?

So when we talk about student debt, we're talking about loans that students take out to go

to college and university. Some of this money is borrowed from private banks, but overwhelmingly,

more than 90% of it comes from the federal government, specifically the Department of Education.

So right now, there are 45 million borrowers who owe 1.6 trillion in student debt. That's

more money than consumers owe on pretty much any other debt except mortgages. It's more

money than they owe on auto loans, on credit cards. This is the largest debt many young

Americans especially have in their lives. The payments that they're making on it are

often hundreds or thousands of dollars every month.

So it's absolutely fair to call this a crisis, a historic level of debt, saddling, and

enormous percent of the American population.

Yes. What's been really striking about it is how quickly it's grown. Since 2006, the

amount Americans owe on student debt has tripled. You look at the graphs and it's just like

a complete hockey stick. It just goes up and up very, very quickly. So that's why this

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