Serious question: Who loses out if all the student debt got canceled? Not the colleges, I assume, because they already got the tuition. And not the students. So would it be loan companies and the US government? Would such an action be catastrophic?
Imagine you and I agree to a deal, both verbally and contractually (i.e. on paper). I give you 10 euros and you pay me back 11 euros in exactly 1 year.
Now 6 months into the deal you suddenly ask yourself: "Well who would lose out when this debt gets cancelled?"
Do you see now why I think it is a nonsensical question?
(In this thought experiment we're ignoring insurance. Or you could imagine an uninsured asset being destroyed.)
The truck (or student loans) was still paid for. I thought I'd get my money back, but I didn't and that is a risk in loaning money. I can write that off as a loss in my taxes, and recuperate some of the losses, but definitely not all.
So in our student loan case somebody still has to pay off that debt. Either it is by a massive loss to the companies that loaned the money (let's ignore the possibility of them being in the green) or the federal government purchases the loans and writes them off. And if the loan companies are forced to write them off then that is written off as an expense and can greatly change how their taxes are calculated (see Trump). Which the "pays for" is that purchase or tax deduction/rebate. And now the entire tax paying population pays for (which tbh I'm personally okay with). But it still gets paid by somebody. Somebody "loses" (maybe not in the long run, but in our short game).