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A majority of student loan borrowers are worried about their ability to repay their loans

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About 94% of borrowers worry about ever repaying their student loans.  (iStock)

Student loan debt has been an ongoing discussion among Americans for years as the debt balance continues to grow. The country’s total student loan debt now sits at $1.6 trillion, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.

These debts are overwhelming for many borrowers. Nearly 94% of respondents to a Credit and Debt survey expressed significant worry about their ability to repay their student loans. An additional 65% said their monthly payments are already unaffordable.

It’s not for lack of trying either. Many borrowers want to pay off their debt, the survey found. About 92% of survey respondents said paying off their student loans is a top priority.

Borrowers are seeking more effective solutions to their debt — 67% of respondents want better ways to deal with their debt, such as refinancing or consolidation options.

If you’re considering refinancing, make sure to compare student loan refinancing rates before you apply, so you can make sure you find the best deal for you. Credible can help you find rates that work better for your budget

REPUBLICAN STATES FILE SUIT TO STOP BIDEN’S SAVE STUDENT LOAN REPAYMENT PLAN

President Biden just announced $7.4 billion in student loan debt relief

The Biden Administration announced more student debt relief recently. They approved $7.4 billion in relief for 277,000 borrowers.

The forgiveness was broken down into three different types. $3.6 billion went towards 206,800 borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan. Borrowers who have been paying for 10 years and originally borrowed $12,000 or less are likely to receive some relief.

An additional $3.5 billion was set aside for 65,800 borrowers who saw adjustments to their income-driven repayment plans. About 4,600 other borrowers received $300 million due to fixes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs.

“Today’s announcement shows — once again — that the Biden-Harris Administration is not letting up its efforts to give hardworking Americans some breathing room,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said.

“As long as there are people with overwhelming student loan debt competing with basic needs such as food and healthcare, we will remain relentless in our pursuit to bring relief to millions across the country.”

The Biden Administration’s announcement brings the total loan forgiveness it has provided to $153 billion for about 4.3 million Americans.

If you have private student loans, unfortunately, federal relief doesn’t apply to you. If you’re looking to lower monthly payments and ease the burden of student loan debt, consider refinancing your student loans. Lock in some of the lowest interest rates ever via the online marketplace Credible.

PRESIDENT BIDEN ANNOUNCES NEW STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS PLANS THAT COULD BENEFIT 23 MILLION AMERICANS

Many voters want to see student debt relief happen

Election season is here, and voters are eager to see student loan forgiveness discussed by the two candidates.

A Protect Borrowers Action poll, conducted by SocialSphere took a look at voters’ attitudes toward student loan debt. Nearly half of the respondents said canceling debt is an important issue for them.

Voters of color were even more likely to want debt cancelation discussed in this upcoming election – 66% of respondents of color said this was one of their top issues. 

One survey participant explained, “It’s [student debt] like a giant anchor pulling you into the depths of the sea.”

Another one explained the burden they face, saying, “I owe more than what I initially borrowed. It feels very overwhelming.” 

A large majority of survey respondents think something should be done to alleviate student debt — 70% of respondents want the government to act. Borrowers who have already paid off their loans largely agree, with 67% responding that the government should help reduce student debt balances.

To get out from under your student loan debt, refinancing can potentially help you secure a lower interest rate. To see if refinancing is right for you, view this rates table from Credible to compare rates from multiple lenders at once.

RETIRED AMERICANS WITH STUDENT LOAN DEBT RISK GARNISHMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS

Have a finance-related question, but don’t know who to ask? Email The Credible Money Expert at [email protected] and your question might be answered by Credible in our Money Expert column.

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DeepSeek AI excitement spills over to Hong Kong’s IPO market

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The Exchange Square Complex, which houses the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, on Feb. 26, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BEIJING — Chinese companies are jumping at a window of opportunity to go public in Hong Kong as global investors start to return to the region, following the news of DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence breakthrough in late January.

It’s a level of excitement that has not been felt for more than three years, despite the overhang of U.S. trade tensions. Initial public offerings are a lucrative way for early investors in startups to exit and reap a return.

“Everyone is working so perfectly together. IPO candidates, the investor and the regulators,” said George Chan, global IPO leader at EY. “All these three parties are working so perfectly at this moment to actually cultivate a healthy Hong Kong IPO market.”

“The U.S. long-term fund has returned. It shows investors are getting more confident [about] China,” he said, adding that post-IPO performance has also been encouraging.

Chinese bubble tea giant Mixue went public on March 3 in a highly oversubscribed Hong Kong listing. And in a sign of more to come, Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) filed in February for what could be Hong Kong’s largest IPO since 2021, when short-video company Kuaishou listed.

Still think it is a little risky to bet on specific companies or industries in China: GAO Capital

News of China-based DeepSeek’s claims to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT in reasoning capabilities at a lower cost — despite U.S. restrictions on Chinese access to advanced chips for training AI models — hit global tech stocks in late January, while spurring a rally in China. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surged to three-year highs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping also held a rare meeting with tech entrepreneurs in February, and Beijing has signaled greater support for the private sector, after taking a more restrictive stance in recent years.

Six initial public offerings in Hong Kong raised more than 1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($130 million) in the first quarter — a jump from just one listing of that size in the year-ago period — according to KPMG.

In all, the consultancy said, Hong Kong saw 15 IPOs in all of the first quarter which raised 17.7 billion HKD — the best start to a year since 2021.

There’s still a long way to go before recovering to that level. Hong Kong saw 32 IPOs in the first quarter of 2021 that raised a whopping 132.7 billion HKD, according to KPMG.

The Hong Kong stock exchange has adjusted its listing rules in the interim, including ones that support companies already listed in mainland China to offer shares in Hong Kong.

In addition to CATL, other companies listed in mainland China — Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, Mabwell, Haitian Flavoring and Food, Fortior Tech and Sanhua Intelligent Controls — are “actively seeking Hong Kong listings,” said Tiger Brokers, an underwriter of many Chinese companies’ IPOs in the U.S. and Hong Kong.

“Chinese regulators are encouraging companies to list in Hong Kong to broaden financing channels and support the outbound merger and acquisition needs of Chinese enterprises,” the firm said.

Still not out of the woods

Back in the summer of 2021, the fallout over Chinese ride-hailing company Didi’s IPO in the U.S. prompted both countries’ regulators to scrutinize what was then a wave of Chinese companies listing in New York.

The major issues have since been resolved and Beijing has clarified rules for Chinese companies wanting to list outside the mainland. But the Trump administration indicated in its “America First Investment Policy” that it could increase scrutiny on U.S. capital flowing to China, on top of heightened tariffs.

The U.S. and China have yet to indicate when their two leaders might meet in an attempt to forge a deal. A surge of interest in AI and tech are also not yet enough to speed up a recovery in China’s economy.

“At this point in time, all we can see is the good indicators,” EY’s Chan said. But “there could be one single incident happening which could pretty much reverse the trend.”

“Things tend to have a pattern,” he said. “If things can keep on for three months, four months, it will likely continue for the rest of the year.”

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Treasury Secretary Bessent says market woes are more about tech stock sell-off than Trump’s tariffs

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.

“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.

Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.

The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.

However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.

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S&P 500, YTD

Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.

“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”

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Conservative cable channel Newsmax shares plunge more than 70% after a dizzying 2-day surge

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A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. 

Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.

The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors. 

The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.

Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.

The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.

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