Real Money

In addition to the collapse of the global economy and our future days spent selling apples on the street while wearing the barrels they came in as clothes, one of the casualties of the current financial crisis is likely to be our collective sense of proportion. At first numbers like "$700 billion" seemed very big--it did to me at least--but now that it's being repeated ad nauseam on cable TV, the newspapers, etc., it will probably start to seem mundane and establish a floor for monumentality in future catastrophes. That, in turn, will make numbers like $1.3 billion seem like a puny rounding error in comparison--and that happens to be the amount of money that various student lenders looted from the public treasury in recent years by finagling the so called "9.5 percent rule." Which is why it's all the more important that people like New America's Steve Burd are on the case with this new comprehensive break-down of the various industry lies currently being bandied about.