Student Loan Bubble Cracks With Pulled Sallie Mae Bond Deal
Tyler Durden on 04/29/2013 08:19 -0400

In 2007 a small number of French hedge funds imploded over sudden losses stemming from highly leveraged bets made on the unstoppable subprime mortgage market. At the time, a few saw the writing on the wall; but many simply wrote it off as just another over-levered hedge fund and the subprime mortgage market was ‘fine’. Fast forward six years and as we have discussed numerous times (most recently here and here) there is a bubble, potentially far bigger than subprime, in student loan debt. As one of the last remaining outlets for state-sanction credit creation, this is a big deal; but, of course, the popping of the bubble (or even a slight leak) is eschewed since there is so much ‘reach for yield’ and the Fed’s got your back. That is until this week. As WSJ reports, Sallie Mae (SLM), the nation’s largest non-government student lender just cancelled a $225 million debt offering as investors decided they simply were not getting paid enough for risk – amid rising student loan defaults. Simply put, there’s a limit to what investors will tolerate. SLM was offering a stunningly low 3.5% interest on the deal and investors snubbed it, “There are certain limits that can’t, or shouldn’t, be crossed if you’re an investor,” adding that, “we’re beginning to see what the tolerances are.” This is a significant shift since SLM and other issuers of debt backed by student loans sold $7.8 billion worth of securities this year through last week, up from $5.7 billion in the same period of 2012. With the portion of student borrowers who are late on their debt payments by 90 days or more climbing to 31% in 2012, from 24% in 2008; we wonder if this is the tipping point for the student debt in 2013 that was generally ignored in subprime in 2007, until it was too late.
Updated April 25, 2013, 7:23 p.m. ET
Investors Say No to Sallie Mae Bond Deal
Poor Demand for Security Backed Only by Excess Cash Flows Shows Limits to Appetite for Risk
By AL YOON
There’s a limit to how much risk investors will tolerate.
Student-loan company Sallie Mae SLM +0.24% canceled a $225 million bond offering on Thursday after about two weeks on the market, according to people familiar with the deal. The move may mark a line in the sand: Investors whose thirst for yield has revived all manner of riskier asset classes decided they weren’t getting paid enough to buy at the offered price amid rising student-loan defaults. Read more of this post
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