Last year, the New York Federal Reserve estimated that student loan debt would exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2012. At the moment, the New York Fed claims that $870 billion in student loan debt is outstanding.
However, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the agency created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which is tasked with policing consumer lending — believes that the New York Fed is underestimating the amount of student debt that Americans hold. In fact, a CFPB analysis shows that student debt has already cleared $1trillion:
Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
