margin-right:0in">Bernanke’s remarks highlighted some policymakers’ concern with the total amount of student debt and the attendant effects on consumption and investment. The higher the debt load and payments, the less money workers have for down payments for new homes, cars or to put away for retirement.

“What's frustrating is that many people in Washington don’t really look at it urgently,” Chopra said. “Student debt is unquestionably strangling our people, and I think to say that it's not having a broader impact in some ways may be naive.” Chopra said that student debt burdens are “not going to cause some immediate doomsday, but the long-term effect can be very, very real,” Chopra added.

Compounding the problem of overall debt loads is the fact that the vas...

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