Rarely do we respond to a comment on the site, but one recent comment deserves a front page reply.  Specifically, a commenter with the handle 'blessedcurse' fired off a comment [0] in response to a recent post about MOHELA's recent failure to make another scheduled Lewis & Clark payment.  'blessedcurse' wrote:

MOHELA's woes have very little to do with Lewis & Clark and are mostly due to the colapse [sic] of the auction rate bond market and changes in federal regulations governing student loan lenders...

In other words, 'blessedcurse' makes the case that Matt Blunt's sale of MOHELA can't be blamed for any the loan agency's current woes because those difficulties are attributable to fluctuations in the market and interceding federal action.  Implicit in the argument is the idea that the events 'blessedcurse' cites were either unforeseen or unforeseeable, leaving the proponents of the sale of MOHELA's assets free from any responsibility.

Of course, the trouble with this line of reasoning is that all of the "unforeseeable" occurrences cited by 'blessedcurse' were the very same reasons pointed to by opponents of the MOHELA sale while it was being discussed in the legislature as reasons why the asset sale was a terrible idea.

Back in February 2007, audit firm Liscarnan Solutions foresaw the dangers posed [1] to the feasibility of the sale by pending changes in federal law and made them plain:

“The modeling of MOHELA’s future business activity and the related cash flow projects, may no longer be valid,” said Liscaman staffer Seamus O’Neill. “We urge MOHELA not to take any further actions related to the Cooperation Agreement until we are more confident as to statutory changes to the Higher Education Act and their impact on MOHELA.”

Also last February, Democratic leader Jeff Harris cited similar concerns [2] when withdrawing support for the MOHELA initiative:

But Harris said in a letter to the Republican governor that he longer backs the sale of MOHELA loans to finance the buildings because of concerns the plan could jeopardize the quasi-governmental agency's ability to continue providing low-interest loans.

Further, banker John Greer spoke up at the time [3] to point out that the sale could foist illiquidity upon MOHELA and hamper its ability to deal with the sort of market downturn the agency now faces:

I also warned that it was essential for MOHELA to marshal its assets to be prepared to react quickly to whatever changes occurred in federal law regarding student loans - changes being considered by Congress at that very moment. The governor’s plan, I said, would leave MOHELA without financial liquidity when it would need it most.

To hear apologists for Matt Blunt and the GOP legislature tell it, nobody can bear any fault for MOHELA's current predicament because no one could possibly have known that the securities market entails risk or that Congress might pass new laws that were already being considered.  But to believe their story one must also be willing to pretend that no one was pointing to those very same soft spots back prior to the MOHELA deal's consummation.  Doing that requires making believe that lots of people weren't saying things that they very clearly did.