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U.S. new vehicle sales could fall to the lowest first-quarter volume in the past decade as chip shortages and the Ukraine crisis squeeze inventories and rising prices push less affluent buyers out of the market, research firm Cox Automotive said yesterday, Reuters reported. U.S. car and light truck sales are expected to fall more than 24% to about 1.22 million units in March and decline more than 16% in the first quarter. "Make no mistake, this market is stuck in low gear," said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, adding that sales will remain at current levels until supply improves. Cox forecasters said the U.S. economy should not experience a recession. But Cox cut its forecast for U.S. car and light truck sales in all of 2022 to 15.3 million vehicles, down 700,000 vehicles from its January outlook. Fresh lockdowns in China as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine have reignited supply bottlenecks that were easing over recent months. Tight supplies have pushed new vehicle prices to record high levels. Households with less than $75,000 in annual income now account for nearly two percentage points less of the U.S. light vehicle market than a year ago, Chesbrough said. The average income of a new vehicle buyer is now $124,000.

As companies struggle to hire and retain workers during a nationwide labor shortage and waves of post-pandemic turnover, some are offering to help pay off one of the biggest debts many young people owe: their student loans, the Boston Globe reported. Even before the pandemic, interest in student loan repayment programs was rising among employers, said Craig Copeland of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Now in a historically tight labor market, more companies are looking at student loan relief as an offering to woo workers just like health insurance, transit passes, and gym memberships.

A group of U.S. Senate Democrats is pressing large U.S. banks to scrap or significantly reduce overdraft and other fees they charge customers with insufficient funds, Reuters reported. In a letter sent to seven large firms Thursday, the group of five lawmakers — including Senate Banking Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — called for a "fairer and more transparent" fee structure, Reuters reported. Democratic lawmakers and regulators are placing heightened scrutiny on bank fees. The group cited recent research from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which found nearly 80% of such fees are charged to only 9% of accounts. The CFPB is currently soliciting public feedback on ways to potentially curtail overdraft and other "junk fees," and a House Financial Services subcommittee will hold a hearing Thursday on the fees. Under political and regulatory pressure, several large banks, including some that received letters, have taken steps to curtail such fees. In February, Citigroup announced it would eliminate overdraft fees by this summer. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co. and US Bancorp have moved to give customers extra time to bring their account balances above zero. Bank of America said that it would reduce overdraft fees to $10 from $35 beginning in May and eliminate its "nonsufficient fund" fees.

Former Education Secretary John King called on the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt for all borrowers, The Hill reported. King, who served under President Obama, told CBS News on Tuesday that his view stems from a reduction in federal investment in higher education over the last four decades, noting in the 1980s federal Pell Grants covered up to 80 percent of college tuition. "We've got to make up for that policy mistake of the last 40 years by addressing the crushing burden of student debt that so many young people feel today and fixing the problem going forward by committing to debt-free college in the United States," King told the outlet. An estimated 43 million Americans collectively owe at least $1.6 trillion, with the average borrower holding around $36,000 in federal student loans. Federal loan payments are currently paused due to the coronavirus pandemic, but they are set to resume May 1. Lawmakers and advocates have called on the president to both extend the payment moratorium and forgive up to $50,000 per borrower.

The Education Department says that it will hold companies that own certain private colleges financially responsible for taxpayers’ losses if their schools defraud students or abruptly shut down, the New York Times reported. “If a company owns, controls or profits from a college, it should also be on the hook if the institution fails students,” James Kvaal, the department’s under secretary, said in the announcement on Wednesday. Taxpayers have been left with billions of dollars in losses in recent years when student loans made by the government were wiped out because the students were victimized by the schools they attended. The vast majority of those losses stem from for-profit schools that have come under increasing scrutiny for their educational practices. When a college suddenly closes, stranded students can have their federal student loan debt forgiven through what’s known as a closed-school discharge. Another relief program, called borrower defense to repayment, can eliminate the federal student loan debt of students who were significantly misled by their school’s false claims. In both cases, taxpayers are typically stuck paying the tab. The department will require the new guarantees on a rolling basis, as schools sign or renew the agreements that let them receive federal student loan funds. It plans to demand them from private colleges and universities showing signs of potential distress and from those changing ownership. A series of collapses at large for-profit chains have sent claims through both relief programs soaring in recent years. Last month, the Education Department approved borrower-defense claims for thousands of students who attended DeVry University — the first time it has granted claims at a still-operating school. The department said it would try to recoup some of that cost — at least $72 million, with the bill likely to grow — from DeVry’s current owner, which bought the long-troubled school in 2018. The new policy does not guarantee that taxpayers will be repaid for future claims, however. Most investors or organizations that buy schools do so through holding companies, and if the institution implodes, the holding company is typically left with few assets.

Close to $200 billion dollars have been saved by student loan borrowers under a repayment freeze that started during the pandemic, a new analysis found, but researchers believe those borrowers will struggle to make repayments once the freeze is lifted, The Hill reported. An analysis by researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released on Tuesday found that an estimated $195 billion had been saved by close to 37 million student borrowers since a student repayment freeze began in March 2020. The researchers noted that this freeze was only applicable to those who had direct federal student loans and not those with private loans or Family Federal Education Loan (FFEL) loans that were owned by commercial banks. The researchers said that the difficulties those with FFEL loans had making payments during the pandemic “suggest that Direct borrowers will face rising delinquencies once forbearance ends and payments resume.” The analysis noted that between students who had direct federal student loans, private loans and FFEL loans, those with direct federal student loans had higher debt balances and lower credit scores as of February 2020.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the U.S. Congress allocated $46.5 million to help struggling low-income renters stay in their homes during the pandemic. The federal Emergency Rental Assistance program was designed to be a lifeline for those who fell behind on payments as work and income streams were disrupted. But most states were initially slow to disburse the funds — to the frustration of tenants, landlords and housing advocacy groups, Bloomberg News reported. After that sluggish start, there are now signs of significant progress. More than 4.3 million payments worth $20.5 billion were allocated to households nationwide through Jan. 31, the U.S. Treasury reported this month. The aid, while late, likely played a significant role in preventing hundreds of thousands of evictions, according to a new Bloomberg Eviction Lab analysis. Each state set its own ERA guidelines, but typically households with 80% of area median income or less were eligible for about 12 months of rent. Nearly two-thirds of ERA beneficiaries last year had extremely low incomes — families who make less than a third of the median income in their area. About 40% of tenants were Black and 20% were Hispanic, according to Treasury data through Dec. 31. Since each state implemented their own programs to distribute the federal money, progress has been uneven. While North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, and California spent more than 90% of their first round of ERA money, 15 states expended less than 30% of those early funds by end of January, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a nonprofit advocacy group.