Hi, I'm Dan Pramack, and welcome to Axios Recap. Today's Monday, March 22nd. Tech stocks are

finally up, U.S. existing home sales are down, and we're focused on a particularly stubborn

sort of student debt. The Goldie Lke's economy.

That's a phrase often used by economists and talking heads to describe when things are

pretty much in balance.

Not too hot, not too cold.

But Goldie Locks is also used as an adjective by science journalist Molly Webster to describe

her student loans.

Not quite federal, not quite private.

And unlike with the economy, having loans in this middle ground is exactly what you don't want to have.

Let me explain. Last year's CARES Act passed in April, automatically suspended principal and interest payments on federally held student loans. The idea was to

remove a major financial burden in the midst of the pandemic, and it benefited millions of borrowers,

giving many of them their first and best shot at getting ahead of their debts. But for Webster

and around 6 million people like her, it didn't apply.

That's because her federal loans were provided on behalf of the federal government, but by private banks.

So federal loans privately held.

It's a dichotomy the feds did away with in 2010 in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and the government did actually buy back some of those

privately held loans, but lots of them fell through the cracks, and those loans didn't get the

CARES Act reprieve. Why it matters is this thing is creating new inequalities, because Congress

left a loophole. So we wanted to dig in deeper with Molly Webster, who wrote about

her experience yesterday in the New York Times, including what could and should be done next.

That conversation in 15 seconds.

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