In the summer of 2011, 14 million Americans were unemployed and 16% of the country was officially poor. Student loan debt eclipsed credit card with over $1 trillion outstanding. One in five mortgages was underwater. Our leaders said the economy was recovering from the recession caused by the financial crisis, but their soothing pronouncements seemed to mock the evidence of our senses. On September 17, a group of activists converged on a small concrete plaza in lower Manhattan, determined to Occupy Wall Street.

The balance sheet recession – collapsing wealth, underwater homes, student loans – is creating a major part of the crappy economy. Everyone’s waiting for things to get better, and by extension ensuring that nothing will. In this instance, only repairing balance sheets – such as through debt forgiveness – can get the economy on a better path. And then the kids move out of their parent’s house and housing construction starts jumping and we get some relief.

There are two programs here. The first is income-based repayment. Under current law, graduates with student loans can opt to pay 15% of their income for 25 years instead of a monthly student loan repayment based on the cost of the loan. In the reconciliation sidecar to the Affordable Care Act, actually, this was reduced to 10% of income, starting in 2014. The plan announced under executive authority moves that date up to 2012, and changes the debt forgiveness end date to 20 years from 25. This would only benefit those who graduate college between 2012 and 2014; people who have already graduated or who are in repayment won’t benefit from this change. The Administration claims that 1.6 million graduates would be eligible for the new program.

The White House will announce that millions more underwater homeowners can take advantage of a refinancing program if their loan is owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. This is a plan the President announced as part of his American Jobs Act speech It will open up the Home Affordable Refinancing Program to everyone who’s current on their loan, regardless of how far underwater they are.

Tomorrow is May 1, and college graduation season is almost upon us. Seniors everywhere are writing their last papers, taking their last exams, preparing for the end of their college careers, and probably crying about the employment situation. College placement officers might as well be grief counselors.

For the last three years, the unemployment picture has been Ugly with a capital U, especially for those graduating from college. The Economic Policy Institute’s new paper “Class of 2011: Young workers face a dire labor market without a safety net” is a depressingly accurate take on what they face.

Glad I’m not a commencement speaker this year.

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FDL was absolutely right about student loan reform. Good on us!

Please support FDL and victories like “Students, Not Banks” with a tax-deductible contribution to the FireDogLake Writers Foundation – even $25 will go a long way.

Looking back on the year, I believe that the best victory for progressives was student loan reform, which was passed as part of the reconciliation measure. While not as large in scale as some of the bills passed by this Congress, it still was a substantial measure that ends over $60 billion in government waste. I’m proud of the role FDL played when our “Students, Not Banks” campaign helped make sure uncompromised student loan reform was passed this year. Looking back at the year, I wish progressives had been given the chance to have more clear fights like this one.

Please support FDL with a tax-deductible contribution to the FireDogLake Writers Foundation – even $25 will go a long way.

I joined about 37,500 students and activists at USC with Antonio Villaraigosa, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Jamie Foxx, Kal Penn, the Trojan Marching Band, Ozomatli and President Obama. It was one of the several Moving America Forward rallies happening on college campuses across the country.

If the federal government is finally catching up to some of the ways in which the credit card companies prey on customers and muscle out competition, they’ll have to look at what the industry is doing on college campuses, which is one step ahead of them.