As Washington slides ever closer to the "fiscal cliff," "financial vortex," or whatever will be the next term du jour, and our national focus finally shifts to fixing that which has heretofore been deemed "unfixable," perhaps 2013 is the year we try to fix our very broken student loan system.

In the first quarter of 1999, Americans owed $90 billion on student loans. It now exceeds $1 trillion. That's not a bubble, dear friends, that's a black hole.

The laissez-faire environment that allowed this extreme growth (1,100 percent) has more in common with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act or the zoning plan of the greater Houston area than it does with a properly functioning free market system.