Back in September, the U.S. Department Education announced its two-year and three-year federal student loan default rates. The rates were 10 percent and 14.7 percent respectively, both record highs. At the time the report was released, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called these numbers “troubling.”

NYU professor of social and cultural analysis and Occupy activist Andrew Ross would likely call these figures extortionist. Also, not at all unexpected.

“Creditors have their foot on the throat of the global economy,” said Ross on a panel last month at The Brecht Forum in New York. The panel—which included writers, professors, and activists—was there to discuss debt resistance, and Ross’s new book Creditocracy And The Case For Debt Refusal. Resisting one’s debts is a tactic rarely if ever discussed by the American media’s talking heads. Ross’s book humanizes the cryptic problem of a society funded on credit, offering a political voice to those whose economic power has been throttled.

Read the full post at Salon.