Sorry to pick on the Art Majors, but all of this discussion about President Obama’s Executive Order on student loans has pointed the country down an interesting path. Perform this thought experiment with me… The vast majority of student loans in the United States are federally backed. There are also $1,000,000,000,000 in student loans outstanding. This means that, in the event student loans aren’t paid, the debt will be borne by the general fund of the United States (read: taxpayers paying private and public colleges). Should taxpayers demand lower paying majors pay higher student loan rates?
Read the rest of this entry »Should Art and Psychology Majors Pay Higher Student Loan Rates?
On October - 27 - 2011
Of Risk and Men
On June - 27 - 2009
Can states default on their debt? The state of California has been in the news recently because of a $24.3 billion gap in funding. Is it possible that we may soon hear of a state actually going ‘bankrupt’? What are the economic and political ramifications if California takes such a step?
Read the rest of this entry »Hubris, Greed and Excess
On June - 14 - 2009
“Bennet Sedacca announced to the world at 10:15 on the morning of March 5, 2008, that venerable Bear Sterns & Co., the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank was in trouble, big trouble.” The first paragraph opens with a bang. Ten days after Sedacca made that call, he was proven right. Bear Sterns was no more. William D. Cohan’s House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, explains how Bear Sterns got there.
Read the rest of this entry »Stress Banks Yourself!
On June - 12 - 2009
Rortybomb, a blogger and financial engineer from San Francisco posted an interesting spreadsheet based on the stress test results. Hunting through the stress test results, he found a chart on page 6 with ‘Baseline’ and ‘More Advanced’ numbers. Since that’s enough to do a linear extrapolation (of course, with two data points that probably isn’t the most accurate way to do it… see his background post) allowing you to set your own estimate for worst case unemployment numbers. Read on…
Read the rest of this entry »Interesting Bankruptcy Article
On June - 3 - 2009
Take a look at a CNN compiled list of the largest bankruptcies in U.S. history, by assets. Also listed are the assets of Citigroup, Bank or America, AIG and Wells Fargo.
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