dimelab dimelab: shrinking the gap between talk and action.

College Topic in The Credit Debacle Catalog

Boston colleges (1); College Credit-Card Mess (1); College Educations (2); college student credit card debt (6); College Student Debt (1); College Students (7); debt-financed college education (1).

Fri 2010-03-12 08:45 EST

AlterNet: The Richest 1% Have Captured America's Wealth -- What's It Going to Take to Get It Back?

...while US workers are now working more hours and have become dramatically more productive and profitable, our pay is actually declining and all the dramatic increases in wealth are going straight into the pockets of the Economic Elite...the average US citizen is forced to give up approximately 30% of our income in taxes. This tax system is now strategically designed to flow straight into the hands of the Economic Elite. A huge percentage of our tax dollars ultimately end up in their pockets. The past decade proves that -- whether it's the Republicans or the Democrats running the government -- our tax money is not going into our community, it is going into the pockets of the billionaires who have bought off both parties...most every serious economist knows that due to so much theft and debt created in the tax system, the only way to fix things, other than stopping the theft and seizing the trillions that have been stolen, will be for the government to cut important social funding and drastically raise our taxes...Trillions more in our spending on food and fuel has been stolen due to fraudulent stock transactions and overcharging...we have the most expensive health care system in the world and we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries, and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world...The American worker is screwed over every step of the way, and it all starts with the explosion in the cost of a college education. This is one of the Economic Elite's most devastating weapons...The American dream has turned into a nightmare. The economic system is a sophisticated prison cell; the indentured servant is now an indebted wage slave; whips and chains have evolved into debts...

AlterNet; Captured America's Wealth; Go; richest 1; s; take.

zero hedge Tue 2009-11-03 19:57 EST

Guest Post: Systemic Risk is All About Innovation and Incentives: Ed Kane

...we present the views of our friend and mentor Ed Kane of Boston College, who argues that the problem with the financial regulatory framework is not the law, regulation nor even the regulators, but rather the confluence of poorly aligned incentives and financial innovation... The financial crisis of 2007-2009 is the product of a regulation-induced short-cutting and near elimination of private counterparty incentives to perform adequate due diligence along the chain of transactions traversed in securitizing and re-securitizing risky loans (Kane, 2009a). The GLBA [Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999] did make it easier for institutions to make themselves more difficult to fail and unwind. But it did not cause due-diligence incentives to break down in lending and securitization, nor did it cause borrowers and lenders to overleverage themselves. Still, the three phenomena share a common cause. Excessive risk-taking, regulation-induced innovation, and the lobbying pressure that led to the GLBA trace to subsidies to risk-taking that are protected by the political and economic challenges of monitoring and policing the safety-net consequences of regulation-induced innovation. These challenges and the limited liability that their stockholders and counterparties enjoy make it easy for clever managers of large institutions to extract implicit subsidies to leveraged risk-taking from national safety nets (Kane, 2009b)...To reduce the threat of future crises, the pressing task is not to rework bureaucratic patterns of financial regulation, but to repair defects in the incentive structure under which private and government supervisors manage a nation's financial safety net.

Ed Kane; Guest Post; incentives; innovation; systemic risk; Zero Hedge.

ClubOrlov Wed 2009-08-26 15:33 EDT

Welcome to Fuffland!

In the unfolding global financial collapse, it is not just our accounts and balance sheets that come up short, but our language as well. What do you call a bunch of liar loans packaged into toxic assets and placed on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve as collateral for rescue loans? J,K. Galbraith has proposed the term ``Bezzle,'' taking it to mean the eternal ebb and flow of questionable transactions within an economic cycle. Rational actors cut corners during easy times when they know no-one is looking, and then play nice again when the times change and someone starts paying attention again. But I believe that the phenomenon we are observing is something different: we need a word that describes the artifacts generated in response to irrational actors... A fuffle is an artful fake, an artifact specifically made to fool, beguile, seduce, or intimidate people into paying for it. Examples include suburbans houses and associated mortgage financing, SUVs, debt-financed college education, privately funded 401k retirement plans, US Treasury securities.

ClubOrlov; Fuffland; welcome.

Tue 2008-10-07 00:00 EDT

naked capitalism: Crunch Hits Real Economy: Wachovia Funds Limits Access by Colleges

College; Crunch Hits Real Economy; naked capitalism; Wachovia Funds Limits Access.

Sun 2007-09-09 00:00 EDT

Welcome to Fleece U

by Barbara Ehrenreich; college student debt; "your real purpose here is to shake off the pointless freedom of youth and assume the burden of debt"

Fleece U; welcome.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

Majoring in Credit-Card Debt

by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, BusinessWeek (1/4); college student credit card debt

credit card debt; major.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

Confessions of a Credit-Card Pusher

by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, BusinessWeek (2/4); college student credit card debt

confessed; Credit-Card Pusher.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

The Dirty Secret of Campus Credit Cards

by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, BusinessWeek (3/4); college student credit card debt

campus credit card; dirty secret.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

Fixing the College Credit-Card Mess

by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, BusinessWeek (4/4); college student credit card debt

College Credit-Card Mess; Fix.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

Credit-Card Survival Guide

by Jessica Silver-Greenberg, BusinessWeek; college student credit card debt

Credit-Card Survival Guide.

Fri 2007-09-07 00:00 EDT

Credit Cards 101: Finding the Right Plastic

by Lauren Young, BusinessWeek; college student credit card debt

Credit Cards 101; find; Right Plastic.