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Two Indiana borrowers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt President Joe Biden’s student-loan relief plan, saying that his administration is overstepping its authority and forcing them to pay higher state taxes, Bloomberg News reported. The emergency filing, submitted to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, comes 12 days after she summarily rejected a similar bid by a Wisconsin taxpayers group. Justice Barrett is assigned to handle emergency matters from the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused to block the program last week. The Biden plan, designed to take effect this month, would forgive as much as $20,000 in federal loans for certain borrowers making less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 for spouses. It could affect more than 40 million people. The filing asks the Supreme Court to block the program while the case is on appeal. It was announced by the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the two borrowers.

The Biden administration will make it easier for students defrauded by for-profit schools to get federal student loan forgiveness under new rules set to go into effect on July 1, setting up a speedier path for debt relief for potentially hundreds of thousands of borrowers, the Wall Street Journal reported. Students who have been misled by schools about job prospects or are victims of other types of fraudulent behavior and aggressive recruiting will be able to have their federal debt discharged in full by the Education Department. The new regulations, known as Borrower Defense to Repayment, complete a reversal of a Trump administration rule that slowed discharges and provided partial relief to borrowers whose claims were approved. The new rules will make it easier for borrowers to file claims for relief as groups, a change that borrower advocates expect will boost the number of recipients of debt forgiveness without burdening them with a detailed and lengthy application. The overhauled program “will end the bureaucratic nightmares of the past,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

In roughly two months, millions of consumers who borrowed to take out federal student loans will need to dig a little deeper into their pockets to cover another bill for $150 to $300 a month or maybe even more, depending on what they owe, according to a commentary in the Detroit Free Press. Right now, many consumers should be calculating how they're going to hand over more money in 2023 after the payment pause on most federal student loans ends in December. Payments — which have not been required for nearly three years — are scheduled to resume in January. For nearly three years, millions of borrowers with federal student loans have had one less bill to pay each month. They've seen repeated extensions granted since the moratorium on student loan payments began in March 2020 as part of pandemic-related relief efforts. Could another such extension take place? Maybe but it's not in the cards yet. The Biden administration announced an ambitious but controversial federal student loan forgiveness program in late August. A simple online application was officially launched Oct. 17 by the U.S. Department of Education at its website StudentAid.gov. But the massive student loan forgiveness program was quickly put on hold after a temporary stay was issued by a federal appeals court on Oct. 21.

Credit-card debt recently reached a new milestone: It returned to where it was before the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. Total card balances in the U.S. hit $916 billion in September, nearly identical to December 2019 levels, according to the credit-reporting firm Equifax Inc. Balances are up 9% from January and about 23% higher than their pandemic low in April 2021. Card balances fell sharply in the early months of the pandemic after Americans, out of work and stuck at home, cut back on spending. Stimulus checks later padded savings accounts and allowed many to pay down costly debt. Consumers are still paying a higher share of their balances than they were before Covid-19 hit, according to card issuers, but that figure at some lenders is starting to decline. The rising cost of food, gasoline and housing, meanwhile, has strained household budgets, forcing some Americans to use their credit cards to make ends meet.

U.S. consumer spending rose more than expected in September while underlying inflation pressures continued to bubble, keeping the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point next week, Reuters reported. But there was some encouraging news in the fight against stubbornly high inflation, with other data from the Labor Department on Friday showing private industry wage growth slowed considerably in the third quarter. The moderation occurred in inflation-sensitive industries like retail, construction and finance. Sectors such as healthcare and education, which are still experiencing worker shortages, saw a pick-up. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, rose 0.6% last month, the Commerce Department said. Data for August was revised higher to show spending increasing 0.6% instead of 0.4% as previously reported. The Commerce Department report showed the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.3%, matching August's gain. In the 12 months through September, the PCE price index increased 6.2%, after rising by the same margin in August. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PCE price index climbed 0.5%, matching the increase in August. The so-called core PCE price index advanced 5.1% on a year-on-year basis in September after increasing 4.9% in the 12 months through August. The Fed tracks the PCE price indexes for its 2% inflation target. Other inflation measures are running much higher. The consumer price index increased 8.2% on a year-on-year basis in September. But there are some glimmers of hope. In a separate report on Friday, the Labor Department said the Employment Cost Index, the broadest measure of labor costs, rose 1.2% last quarter after increasing 1.3% in the April-June period.

President Joe Biden said that his administration would prevail in lawsuits challenging his student debt relief plan and predicted that applicants would start getting checks within two weeks, Bloomberg News reported. “We’re going to win that case,” Biden said in an interview with NewsNation, a cable outlet. “I think in the next two weeks you’re going to see those checks going out.” The president’s anticipated timing coincides closely with midterm congressional elections on Nov 8. Democrats are counting on the debt relief program to boost turnout among young voters and people of color in the election, in which polls suggest Biden’s party will lose control of at least one chamber of Congress. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the White House’s plan to forgive as much as $20,000 in debt per borrower last week, siding with six Republican-led states that have challenged the plan. The decision prevents the administration from dispersing relief while the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis weighs an injunction request. The case was dismissed by a federal district court judge, but revived on appeal. The ruling does not prohibit borrowers from applying for relief through the Department of Education. More than 22 million Americans had already applied for the program, the president said last week.

Credit-card debt recently reached a new milestone: It returned to where it was before the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. Total card balances in the U.S. hit $916 billion in September, nearly identical to December 2019 levels, according to the credit-reporting firm Equifax Inc. Balances are up 9% from January and about 23% higher than their pandemic low in April 2021. Card balances fell sharply in the early months of the pandemic after Americans, out of work and stuck at home, cut back on spending. Stimulus checks later padded savings accounts and allowed many to pay down costly debt. When the economy reopened and people went back to work, credit-card issuers launched a big push to get people borrowing again. Many loosened underwriting standards, making it easier for people with lower credit scores to get cards. Now, Americans are spending and borrowing, despite fears that a recession is on the horizon. Missed payments on credit cards, while rising, remain below prepandemic levels.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday issued guidance that surprise overdraft fees and unexpected depositor fees for bounced checks are likely unfair and unlawful practices, Reuters reported. The agency said that both fees likely violate the Consumer Financial Protection Act's prohibition on unfair fees that are unavoidable to consumers. Overdraft fees can catch consumers off guard when they don't reasonably expect their actions to incur a fee, while charging a fee to a depositor of a bounced check penalizes someone who might not be aware of a bad check, the CFPB said. Americans are willing to pay for legitimate services at a competitive price, but are frustrated when they are hit with junk fees for unexpected or unwanted services that have no value to them,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “We are providing guidance on existing law that will help law-abiding businesses seeking to fairly compete and the families they serve.”