Finance

China’s communists see themselves as a “vanguard party”, full of dedicated social warriors. Less than 9% of the country’s adult population are members, according to figures released on June 30th. Gaining entry can take years. Even Xi Jinping, the party’s boss, was not admitted until his tenth attempt. Aspiring members are often made to attend ideology classes, take written tests, submit “thought reports”, demonstrate their worthiness through community service and survive an interview by a panel of members. Is it worth the bother?The answer might seem obvious. “Virtually every influential position in China is held by a party member,” as Bruce Dickson of George Washington University has noted. Leaks like the Panama papers have revealed the offshore riches accumulated by the families of party leaders. And Chinese social media will occasionally erupt over indiscreet displays of wealth or privilege by members, like the boss of a PetroChina subsidiary, spotted strolling through a Chengdu shopping district in June holding hands with a fashionable younger employee who was not his wife. Yet changes in the party and the economy may be eroding the material benefits of membership.Party members can be found at every rung of the economic ladder. Of the poorest tenth of Chinese households, about 14% contain a party member, according to the China Household Finance Survey by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. A third of members are farmers and workers (down from two-thirds in 1994). Since becoming head of the party in 2012, Mr Xi has urged cadres to adhere to a less hedonistic lifestyle. “Incorruptibility is a blessing and greed is a curse,” he advised in a recent speech. In work published in 2019, Plamen Nikolov of Binghamton University and co-authors calculate a 20% wage premium for members over similar workers. One reason, according to other research, may be that card-carrying communists are more likely to get jobs in state-owned enterprises (soes) and official institutions. Figures released in May show urban soes last year paid 89% more than private firms in cities. This gap has grown during Mr Xi’s reign. But as any well-trained communist knows, true economic clout derives not from labour but capital. So how does party membership affect the assets people own, such as their stocks, bonds and property?Recent research by Matteo Targa of diw Berlin and Li Yang of the Paris School of Economics reaches a surprising conclusion. The two economists look at the urban wealth distribution, as documented by the China Household Finance Survey. In each wealth bracket, some fraction of households include party members. If the fraction were to increase by one percentage point, what would happen to that bracket’s wealth? Messrs Targa and Li calculate that at the lower rungs of the wealth distribution, party membership makes a substantial difference. At the tenth percentile, for example, a one-percentage-point increase in party-membership rates would increase wealth by almost 0.9% (see chart). But the higher up you go, the weaker the financial rewards seemingly offered by membership. For households at the 93rd percentile and beyond, party membership makes no discernible difference at all.One reason for this divergence is property. Among the middle and upper echelons of Chinese society, almost everybody now owns a flat, whether they are a member of the party or not. And so everyone in these wealth brackets has benefited from the long real-estate boom that ended in 2021. Home ownership is, unsurprisingly, patchier among people on the lower rungs of the ladder. For these households, party membership may be a decisive factor governing whether or not they own a flat. In the five years since the household-finance survey was carried out, home-ownership rates in China have risen further. House prices have also recently fallen in cities, narrowing the gap between the propertied classes and everyone else. Both of these trends probably mean that becoming a communist confers less of a material benefit than it did five years ago, let alone 20 years back. Thanks to these economic forces, Mr Xi may get the more ascetic cadres for which he has been looking. His purges and rectification campaigns have abolished some of the perks of party membership. His mishandling of China’s property market may have helped, too. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

IN LATE JUNE Robert Friedland, the bombastic boss of Ivanhoe, a Canadian miner, warned that the world was running the risk of a “train wreck”, when a crunch in copper supply would derail the energy transition. The metal is used in everything from wiring to wind turbines—and green mandates in America, Asia and Europe will soon demand many more of these. The price of copper, Mr Friedland suggested, could jump ten-fold in response. Right now, however, the train is not so much derailed as chugging along happily. Having peaked at $10,700 a tonne in March last year, copper prices at the London Metal Exchange have dropped by around 10% since January, to $8,300 a tonne. Spot prices remain on par with or higher than those for delivery in three months, suggesting that investors do not expect them to bounce back soon. What is going on?Because of its range of uses, which include construction, electronics and weaponry, copper prices indicate the health of the global economy, earning the metal the nickname “Dr Copper”. Worries about the economy may therefore be making investors gloomy about copper’s prospects. The post-covid rebound in China, which consumes as much as 55% of global supply, is already fading. Growth is also flagging in the West as rising interest rates bite. Yet the lack-of-demand story does not fully explain the price fall. Despite the country’s construction slump, China is using 5% more copper this year than last, possibly because the metal—used to form cladding, pipes and roofs—tends to track building completions, which have held up, rather than housing starts. A 7% jump in the making of cooling units in anticipation of a hot summer also supports demand. If copper markets are decidedly cool, then, it is also because supply has risen. Over the winter a series of disruptions—from protests in Peru to floods in Indonesia—dented global production. Now these problems are easing. As a result, smelters are feeling confident enough to charge miners higher fees, indicating no shortage of raw materials (see chart 1).At the same time, financial investors are snubbing copper. As interest rates rise, they prefer to hold cash-generating assets rather than commodities, which yield nothing. For much of this year “non-commercial” net positioning on copper-futures markets has been in the red, implying that more investors are betting prices will fall than recover (see chart 2). Yet today’s prices remain $2,500 a tonne above production costs at the marginal mine, notes Robert Edwards of CRU, a consultancy. This implies that the recent correction has taken froth out of the market, rather than pushed prices too low, suggesting they could stay subdued for a while.As the energy transition speeds up, it should give a jolt to demand. Sales of electric vehicles (evs), which are already rising, are expected to ramp up significantly in the coming years, and each unit contains three to four times more copper than its petrol-powered peer. Even in a scenario where the transition happens slowly, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an official forecaster, estimates that copper demand from green uses, propelled by the ev boom and undersea cabling for wind farms, will nearly double by 2040. Supply may struggle to keep up. The average age of the world’s ten biggest mines is 64, which is forcing miners to dig deep for ores of ever lower quality, making each new tonne of refined copper costlier to produce. New mines are scarce. Assuming all certain and probable projects go ahead, McKinsey, a consultancy, forecasts that supply will hit 30m tonnes by 2031, 7m tonnes short of estimated demand. A severe crunch like that envisioned by Mr Friedland could still be avoided. Most forecasting models, including the IEA’s, expect copper demand outside clean-energy uses to remain stable. Tom Price and Ben Davis of Liberum Capital, an investment bank, reckon this is unlikely, because China’s long building boom has probably ended. Pricey copper will also prompt substitution: some evs already use aluminium wiring. And McKinsey points out that new tech—if it achieves its potential—could close much of the supply gap this decade. There is time to avoid a train wreck. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Over the past year we have examined the economic fortunes of Hikelandia. In this group of eight countries—Brazil, Chile, Hungary, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland and South Korea—central banks have fought inflation with unparalleled aggression. Hikelandia started raising interest rates a whole year before America’s Federal Reserve, putting it well ahead of the curve. Since then its average policy rate has risen by more than seven percentage points, compared with around five for the Fed. Yet for months Hikelandia’s central bankers had little joy: inflation kept rising.Now, at long last, that is changing. Although Hikelandia’s “core” inflation, a measure that strips out volatile prices such as for food and energy, is still too high, at around 9% year on year, it is on the way down, in part because higher rates are starting to bite (see chart). Hikelandia’s experience offers a glimmer of hope for other inflation-fighting central banks.Wage inflation is moderating across the land. In Chile, for example, pay growth is down a little from the outrageously high 11% year-on-year rate reached in January. This, in turn, is helping cut measures of inflationary pressure. In October South Korea’s inflation rate in the labour-intensive service sector was 4.2% year on year; it has since fallen to 3.3%. Poland’s has slipped from 13.4% in December to 12.3%.Inflation expectations are also dropping, influenced by falling energy and food prices. The average Brazilian expects inflation of 4% over the next year, down from 6% for much of 2022. Kiwis reckon inflation in five years’ time will be around 1%, half their forecast in December.Norway is the only member of Hikelandia that seems to be making no progress. In May core prices unexpectedly rose by 6.7% year on year, a new high. A weaker krone is raising the cost of imports. Strong domestic demand is playing a role, too. In June the central bank surprised markets in an attempt to cool things down, raising the policy rate by 0.5 percentage points.Outside Oslo, the mood music in Hikelandia’s central banks has changed. Officials are still talking tough, of course. South Korea’s rate-setters insist that they will maintain hawkish policy for a “considerable time”. Brazil’s monetary-policy committee worries about “a larger or more persistent de-anchoring of long-term inflation expectations”. Yet this hides the fact that Hikelandia’s central banks have largely stopped raising rates. Chile’s bank believes inflationary risks “have been balancing out”. Hungary’s rate-setters expect that “disinflation will continue to accelerate”.Success has come at a cost, though. In 2021 the world economy and Hikelandia grew at the same speed. Now, global growth is 2.5% at an annualised rate, and Hikelandia is stagnating. The unemployment rate has risen by close to a percentage point from a recent low in Chile, and is inching up in Brazil and New Zealand. At least for a while, Hikelandia’s policymakers will probably see a slower economy as a price worth paying. Inflation will have to fall an awfully long way before we start calling these countries “Cutlandia”. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

For as long as inflation has been high economists have fought about where it came from and what must be done to bring it down. Since central bankers have raised interest rates and headline inflation is falling, this debate may seem increasingly academic. In fact, it is increasingly important. Inflation is falling mostly because energy prices are down, a trend that will not last for ever. Underlying or “core” inflation is more stubborn (see chart 1). History suggests that even a small amount of sticky underlying inflation is hard to dislodge. So the chiefs of the world’s most important central banks are now warning that their job is far from done. “Getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go,” said Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, on June 29th. “We cannot waver, and we cannot declare victory,” Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told a meeting of central bankers in Portugal just two days earlier. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, recently said that interest rates will probably stay higher than markets expect. This means there will be no let-up in the economists’ wars. The first front is partly ideological, and concerns who should shoulder the blame for rising prices. An unconventional but popular theory suggests greedy firms are at fault. This idea first emerged in America in mid-2021, when profit margins for non-financial companies were unusually strong and inflation was taking off. It is now gaining a second wind, propelled by the IMF, which recently found that rising profits “account for almost half the increase” in euro-zone inflation over the past two years. Ms Lagarde appears to be entertaining the thesis, too, telling the European Parliament that “certain sectors” had “taken advantage” of the economic turmoil, and that “it’s important that competition authorities could actually look at those behaviours.”Greedflation is a comforting idea for left-leaning types who think the blame for inflation is too often pinned on workers. Yet it would be strange to think firms suddenly became more greedy, making prices accelerate. Inflation is caused by demand exceeding supply—something that offers plentiful profit opportunities. The greedflation thesis “muddles inflation’s symptoms with its cause”, according to Neil Shearing of Capital Economics, a consultancy. Wages have tended to play catch-up with prices, not vice versa, because, as the IMF’s economists note, “wages are slower than prices to react to shocks”. That is a crucial lesson from today’s inflationary episode for those who always view economic stimulus as being pro-worker.The second front in the inflation wars concerns geography. America’s inflation was at first more homegrown than the euro zone’s. Uncle Sam spent 26% of GDP on fiscal stimulus during covid-19, compared with 8-15% in Europe’s big economies. And Europe faced a worse energy shock than America after Russia invaded Ukraine, both because of its dependence on Russian natural gas and the greater share of its income that goes on energy. A recent paper by Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, and colleagues attributes just 6% of the euro zone’s underlying inflation surge to economic overheating, compared with 80% of America’s. This implies that Europe can get away with looser policy. The 3% of GDP of extra fiscal stimulus the euro zone has recently unleashed by subsidising energy bills, the authors find, has not contributed to overheating, and by reducing measured energy prices may even have stopped an inflationary mindset from taking hold. (The authors caution that things might have been different had energy prices not fallen, reducing the subsidy.) Interest rates are lower in Europe, too. Financial markets expect them to peak at around 4% in the euro zone, compared with 5.5% in America. Despite all this, inflation problems on each side of the Atlantic actually seem to be becoming more alike over time. In both places, inflation is increasingly driven by the price of local services, rather than food and energy (see chart 2). The pattern suggests that price rises in both places are being driven by strong domestic spending. Calculated on a comparable basis, core inflation is higher in the euro zone. So is wage growth. According to trackers produced by Goldman Sachs, a bank, wages are growing at an annualised pace of 4-4.5% in America, and nearly 5.5% in the euro area.Hence the importance of a final front: the labour market. Even if profit margins fall, central banks cannot hit their 2% inflation targets on a sustained basis without the demand for and supply of workers coming into better balance. Last year economists debated whether in America this required a higher unemployment rate. Chris Waller of the Fed said no: it was plausible job vacancies, which had been unusually high, could fall instead. Olivier Blanchard, Alex Domash and Lawrence Summers were more pessimistic. In past economic cycles, they pointed out, vacancies fell only as unemployment rose. Since then Mr Waller’s vision has in part materialised. Vacancies have fallen enough that, according to Goldman, the rebalancing of the labour market is three-quarters complete. Unemployment remains remarkably low, at 3.7%.Yet the process seems to have stalled of late (fresh data were due to be released as we published this article). Mr Blanchard and Ben Bernanke, a former Fed chairman, recently estimated that, given the most recent relationship between vacancies and joblessness, getting inflation to the Fed’s target would require the unemployment rate to exceed 4.3% for “a period of time”. Luca Gagliardone and Mark Gertler, two economists, reckon that unemployment might rise to 5.5% in 2024, resulting in inflation dropping to 3% in a year and then falling towards 2% “at a very slow pace”. Rises in unemployment of such a size are not enormous, but in the past have typically been associated with recessions. Meanwhile, in the euro zone, vacancies have not been particularly elevated relative to unemployment, making the route to a painless disinflation even more difficult to see. It is this front of the inflation wars which is most finely poised—and where the stakes are highest. ■ More

For as long as inflation has been high economists have fought about where it came from and what must be done to bring it down. Since central bankers have raised interest rates and headline inflation is falling, this debate may seem increasingly academic. In fact, it is increasingly important. Inflation is falling mostly because energy prices are down, a trend that will not last for ever. Underlying or “core” inflation is more stubborn (see chart 1). History suggests that even a small amount of sticky underlying inflation is hard to dislodge. So the chiefs of the world’s most important central banks are now warning that their job is far from done. “Getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go,” said Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, on June 29th. “We cannot waver, and we cannot declare victory,” Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, told a meeting of policymakers in Portugal just two days earlier. Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, recently said that interest rates will probably stay higher than markets expect. This means that there will be no let-up in the economists’ wars. The first front is partly ideological, and concerns who should shoulder the blame for rising prices. An unconventional but popular theory suggests greedy firms are at fault. This idea first emerged in America in mid-2021, when profit margins for non-financial companies were unusually strong and inflation was taking off. It is now gaining a second wind, propelled by the IMF, which recently found that rising profits “account for almost half the increase” in euro-zone inflation over the past two years. Ms Lagarde appears to be entertaining the thesis, too, telling the European Parliament that “certain sectors” had “taken advantage” of the economic turmoil, and that “it’s important that competition authorities could actually look at those behaviours.”Greedflation is a comforting idea for left-leaning types who feel that blame for inflation is too often pinned on workers. Yet it would be strange to think firms suddenly became greedier, making prices accelerate. Inflation is caused by demand exceeding supply—something that offers plentiful profit opportunities. The greedflation thesis thus “muddles inflation’s symptoms with its cause”, according to Neil Shearing of Capital Economics, a consultancy. Wages have tended to play catch-up with prices, not vice versa, because, as the IMF’s economists note, “wages are slower than prices to react to shocks”. That is a crucial lesson from today’s inflationary episode for those who always view economic stimulus as being pro-worker.The second front in the inflation wars concerns geography. America’s inflation was at first more home-grown than the euro zone’s. Uncle Sam spent 26% of GDP on fiscal stimulus during covid-19, compared with 8-15% in Europe’s big economies. And Europe faced a worse energy shock than America after Russia invaded Ukraine, both because of its dependence on Russian natural gas and the greater share of income that is spent on energy. A recent paper by Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, and colleagues attributes just 6% of the euro zone’s underlying inflation surge to economic overheating, compared with 80% of America’s. This implies that Europe can get away with looser policy. The 3% of GDP of extra fiscal stimulus the euro zone has recently unleashed by subsidising energy bills, the authors find, has not contributed to overheating, and by reducing measured energy prices may even have stopped an inflationary mindset from taking hold. (The authors caution that things might have been different had energy prices not fallen, reducing the subsidy.) Interest rates are lower in Europe, too. Financial markets expect them to peak at around 4% in the euro zone, compared with 5.5% in America. Despite all this, inflation problems on each side of the Atlantic actually seem to be becoming more alike over time. In both places, inflation is increasingly driven by the price of local services, rather than food and energy (see chart 2). The pattern suggests that price rises in both places are being driven by strong domestic spending. Calculated on a comparable basis, core inflation is higher in the euro zone. So is wage growth. According to trackers produced by Goldman Sachs, a bank, wages are growing at an annualised pace of 4-4.5% in America, and nearly 5.5% in the euro area.Hence the importance of a final front: the labour market. Even if profit margins fall, central banks cannot hit their 2% inflation targets on a sustained basis without the demand for and supply of workers coming into better balance. Last year economists debated whether in America this required a higher unemployment rate. Chris Waller of the Fed said no: it was plausible job vacancies, which had been unusually high, could fall instead. Olivier Blanchard, Alex Domash and Lawrence Summers were more pessimistic. In past economic cycles, they pointed out, vacancies fell only as unemployment rose. Since then Mr Waller’s vision has in part materialised. Vacancies have fallen enough that, according to Goldman, the rebalancing of the labour market is three-quarters complete. Unemployment remains remarkably low, at 3.7%.Yet the process seems to have stalled of late (fresh data were due to be released as we published this article). Mr Blanchard and Ben Bernanke, a former Fed chairman, recently estimated that, given the most recent relationship between vacancies and joblessness, getting inflation to the Fed’s target would require the unemployment rate to exceed 4.3% for “a period of time”. Luca Gagliardone and Mark Gertler, two economists, reckon that unemployment might rise to 5.5% in 2024, resulting in inflation dropping to 3% in a year and then falling towards 2% “at a very slow pace”. Rises in unemployment of such a size are not enormous, but in the past have typically been associated with recessions. Meanwhile, in the euro zone, vacancies have not been particularly elevated relative to unemployment, making the route to a painless disinflation even more difficult to foresee. It is this front of the inflation wars which is most finely poised—and where the stakes are highest. ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Fed officials at their June meeting decided to hold off on raising interest rates, opting for a pause to assess the impact of 10 previous hikes.
Minutes released Wednesday indicated disagreement among members, with some saying that rates should go higher as inflation remains elevated.

Almost all Federal Reserve officials at their June meeting indicated further tightening is likely, if at a slower pace than the rapid-fire rate increases that had characterized monetary policy since early 2022, according to minutes released Wednesday.Policymakers decided against a rate rise amid concerns over economic growth, even though most members think further hikes are on the way. Citing the lagged impact of policy and other concerns, they saw room to skip the June meeting after enacting 10 straight rate increases.Officials felt that “leaving the target range unchanged at this meeting would allow them more time to assess the economy’s progress toward the Committee’s goals of maximum employment and price stability.”Federal Open Market Committee members voiced hesitance over a multitude of factors.They said that a brief pause would give the committee time to assess the impacts of the hikes, which have totaled 5 percentage points, the most aggressive moves since the early 1980s.”The economy was facing headwinds from tighter credit conditions, including higher interest rates, for households and businesses, which would likely weigh on economic activity, hiring, and inflation, although the extent of these effect remained uncertain,” the minutes said.The unanimous decision not to raise rates came in “consideration of the significant cumulative tightening in the stance of monetary policy and the lags with which policy affects economic activity and inflation.”
Markets showed little reaction to the release. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off about 120 points nearing the final hour of trading while Treasury yields were sharply higher.

Disagreement at the Fed

The document reflected some disagreement among members. According to projection materials released after the June 13-14 session, all but two of the 18 participants expected that at least one hike would be appropriate this year, and 12 expected two or more.”The participants favoring a 25 basis point increase noted that the labor market remained very tight, momentum in economic activity had been stronger than earlier anticipated, and there were few clear signs that inflation was on a path to return to the Committee’s 2 percent objective over time,” the minutes said.Even among those favoring tightening, there was a general feeling that the pace of hikes, which included four straight 0.75 percentage point increases at consecutive meetings, would abate.”Many [officials] also noted that, after rapidly tightening the stance of monetary policy last year, the Committee had slowed the pace of tightening and that a further moderation in the pace of policy firming was appropriate in order to provide additional time to observe the effects of cumulative tightening and assess their implications for policy,” the minutes said.Since the meeting, policymakers mostly have stuck with the narrative that they don’t want to give in too quickly on the inflation fight.In remarks to Congress a week after the June 13-14 meeting, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank has “a long way to go” to bring inflation back to the Fed’s 2% goal.He also has emphasized a united front among the 18 Federal Open Market Committee members, noting that all of them foresee rates staying at least where they are through the end of the year, and all but two see rates rising.That has been largely true, despite some misgivings. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, for instance, has said he thinks rates are sufficiently restrictive and officials can back off now as they wait for the lagged impact from the 10 hikes making their way through economy.Data also has been largely on the Fed’s side, even though inflation remains well above the target.Most recently, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge saw just a 0.3% increase in May, though it was still reflecting a 4.6% annual rate.The labor market also has showed some signs of loosening, though job openings still outnumber available workers by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Fed officials have stressed the importance of reducing that disparity as they look to tamp down the demand that pushed inflation higher. More

Meta Verified displayed on mobile with Meta on screen, seen in this photo illustration, on February 27, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images More

The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday in a 6-3 ruling. Loan payments are poised to restart in October.
The Federal Trade Commission warned in a consumer alert that scammers would likely target borrowers, perhaps posing as U.S. Department of Education personnel and offering loan assistance.
The FTC offered tips for borrowers to protect themselves.

Damircudic | E+ | Getty Images

Scammers are likely to target student loan borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s debt forgiveness plan Friday and as loan repayments are poised to restart in the fall, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Scammers often “take advantage of confusion around big news like this,” the FTC said in a consumer alert issued Saturday.

“If you’re worried about repaying your loans, the offers to ‘help’ can be tempting,” the alert said. “Scammers are likely to start blasting out robocalls and texts about ‘helping’ you with your loans.”
More from Personal Finance:Biden administration gives student loan holders payment leewaySteps student borrowers should take after Supreme Court rulingWhat Supreme Court student loan ruling could mean for economy
The Biden administration forgiveness plan would have erased up to $20,000 of federal student loans for tens of millions of borrowers.
Estimates suggest the student debts of about 14 million people would have been fully erased. Now, they and other borrowers must brace for monthly loan payments to restart in October, after more than three years of an interest-free pause.
President Joe Biden said Friday after the Supreme Court’s ruling that his administration would pursue another way to deliver debt forgiveness. And when payments restart, there will also be a 12-month period during which borrowers won’t face the harshest consequences of missing payments, including default or negative marks on a credit report, Biden said.

In the meantime, here are three ways to spot a student loan scam should a fraudster try to contact you, according to the FTC.
1. Don’t trust anyone who promises debt relief or loan forgiveness
Scammers try to look real, with official-looking names, seals and logos, the FTC said. They may say they’re affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education.
“They promise special access to repayment plans or forgiveness options — which don’t exist,” the FTC said. “If you’re tempted, slow down, hang up and log into your student loan account to review your options.”
2. Don’t give away your FSA ID login information
Anyone who says they need your Federal Student Aid ID to help you is a scammer, the FTC said.
“If you share it, the scammer can cut off contact between you and your servicer — and even steal your identity,” the agency wrote.
3. Never pay for help with your student loans
“There’s nothing a company can do that you can’t do yourself for free,” the FTC said.
You can get help at StudentAid.gov/repay. Go directly to your loan servicer if your loans are private, the FTC said. More