From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (”No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
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Imagine a retirement where you could have an extra $1million to $3 million in the bank with basically no effort. Now imagine telling your kids that you aren’t going to send them to college. And, you go on, you want them to immediately start a business or get to work as soon as they finish high school.
These are difficult things to imagine because we’ve been so scammed by the “career industry” that tells us we need college degrees in order to succeed in life, regardless of how much money we spend for those degrees or what we actually do with our lives during the four to eight years it takes us to get those degrees.
But in my view, the entire college degree industry is a scam, a self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that needs to stop right now.
1. More than 60% of people entering college take more than four years to graduate. So whatever you think your kids are going to cost you to go to college, add 20% to 100%.
2. The cost of the average college tuition has gone up nine-fold since 1976 versus seven-fold for health care and three-fold for inflation.
3. The differential in lifetime income between a college graduate and a non-college graduate over a 45 year career is approximately $800,000 (read on).
4. If I put that $200,000 that I would’ve spent per child to cover tuition costs, living expenses, books, etc. into bonds yielding just 3% (any muni bonds) and let it compound for 49 years (adding back in the 4 years of college), I get $851,000. So my kids can avoid college and still end up with the same amount in the worst case.
5. If smart, motivated, ambitious kids (the type of kids who get the most out of college) avoided college I’m sure the differential would be a lot less than $800,000 and may even be negative (i.e. they would make more if they avoided college and started going into the business world earlier).
6. The average debt burden of a college graduate is $23,000. Up from $13,000 10 years ago. Students with professional degrees can see their debt burden go higher than $200,000. Total student borrowing has topped $75,000,000,000. It’s too much for young adults just starting their careers.
7. Alternatives to spending $200,000 per kid so they can waste four years of their lives:
- Give them $20,000 to start one to five businesses. Most businesses fail but that’s ok. The education from the process lasts a lifetime and the network you build when you start a business will lead to many future jobs and possibilities.
- Travel the world. That would be an education that pays many dividends and is much cheaper. Your kids can then go to college with a much more mature view of the world.
- Work. They won’t get the best jobs but they can make money, network, get a “hands-on” education, learn the value of money and go to college in their 20s when they can afford it — and make every dollar worth it. Plus your kids will have a more clear idea of what they want to do in the world.
- Volunteer. Let them see a side of life that is harder and where they can add value. An education like that is invaluable.
- Do nothing but read. Get the benefits of a college education without paying the $200,000. I’d be happy to support a child that wants to home school a college education.
1. More than 60% of people entering college take more than four years to graduate. So whatever you think your kids are going to cost you to go to college, add 20% to 100%.
2. The cost of the average college tuition has gone up nine-fold since 1976 versus seven-fold for health care and three-fold for inflation.
3. The differential in lifetime income between a college graduate and a non-college graduate over a 45 year career is approximately $800,000 (read on).
4. If I put that $200,000 that I would’ve spent per child to cover tuition costs, living expenses, books, etc. into bonds yielding just 3% (any muni bonds) and let it compound for 49 years (adding back in the 4 years of college), I get $851,000. So my kids can avoid college and still end up with the same amount in the worst case.
AOL Video
5. If smart, motivated, ambitious kids (the type of kids who get the most out of college) avoided college I’m sure the differential would be a lot less than $800,000 and may even be negative (i.e. they would make more if they avoided college and started going into the business world earlier).
6. The average debt burden of a college graduate is $23,000. Up from $13,000 10 years ago. Students with professional degrees can see their debt burden go higher than $200,000. Total student borrowing has topped $75,000,000,000. It’s too much for young adults just starting their careers.
7. Alternatives to spending $200,000 per kid so they can waste four years of their lives:
* Give them $20,000 to start one to five businesses. Most businesses fail but that’s ok. The education from the process lasts a lifetime and the network you build when you start a business will lead to many future jobs and possibilities.
* Travel the world. That would be an education that pays many dividends and is much cheaper. Your kids can then go to college with a much more mature view of the world.
* Work. They won’t get the best jobs but they can make money, network, get a “hands-on” education, learn the value of money and go to college in their 20s when they can afford it — and make every dollar worth it. Plus your kids will have a more clear idea of what they want to do in the world.
* Volunteer. Let them see a side of life that is harder and where they can add value. An education like that is invaluable.
* Do nothing but read. Get the benefits of a college education without paying the $200,000. I’d be happy to support a child that wants to home school a college education.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/ccLW7F
I’d ask you to also consider the following passage from a day long gone by. I discovered it in a speech by my favorite central banker, Richard W. Fisher:
Every now and then the world is visited by one of these delusive seasons, when ‘the credit system’ … expands to full luxuriance: everybody trusts everybody; a bad debt is a thing unheard of; the broad way to certain and sudden wealth lies plain and open; and men are tempted to dash forward boldly from the facility of borrowing.
Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; bubble rises on bubble; every one helps … to swell the windy superstructure….
It renders the [financier] a magician, and the Exchange a region of enchantment…. No ‘operation’ is thought worthy of attention that does not double or treble the investment. No business is worth following that does not promise an immediate fortune…. The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of wealth that break upon [the] imagination.
“Could this delusion always last, …life …would indeed be a golden dream; but it is as short as it is brilliant.”
Now those last words weren’t written by Fisher or Roosevelt — but by Washington Irving. He was talking about the “Mississippi Bubble” fiasco of 1719. And even though it was penned almost 300 years ago, it reads like it could have been written at the height of the bubble a few years back. Chalk it up to the human condition.
Presented by President Hugo Chávez as an instrument to make shopping for groceries easier, the “Good Life Card” is making various segments of the population wary because they see it as a furtive attempt to introduce a rationing card similar to the one in Cuba.
The measure could easily become a mechanism to control the population, according to civil society groups.
“We see that in short-term this could become a rationing card probably similar to the one used in Cuba,” Roberto León Parilli, president of the National Association of Users and Consumers, told El Nuevo Herald. “It would use more advanced technological means [than those used in Cuba], but when they tell you where to buy and what the limits of what you can buy are, they are conditioning your purchases.”
Chávez said Tuesday that the card could be used to buy groceries at the government chain of markets and supplies.
And although the cards were introduced as a mechanism to deal with scarcities, Suchlicki said, they later became an instrument of control.
“People depended on the government to eat, and nothing gives you more power than having people depend on you to get their food quota,” he said.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/04/1807508/venezuela-introduces-cuba-like.html#ixzz0yfRxVAzp
***Solar Roadways is currently a top contender for the $200M GE Ecomagination contest. Please vote for them at http://www.solarroadways.com/vote.shtml , and help turn this prototype into reality!***
The Solar Roadways project is working to pave roads with solar panels that you can drive on. Co-founder Scott Brusaw has made some major steps forward since our first visit back in 2007, so we visited him again earlier this year for an exclusive update on the project, including the first ever video recorded of the Solar Roadways prototype! For more information visit http://www.solarroadways.com . This Solar Roadway project will be featured in the upcoming feature film by YERT – Your Environmental Road Trip. To learn more about YERT, visit http://yert.com .
The Trophy active protection system creates a hemispheric protected zone around the vehicle where incoming threats are intercepted and defeated. It has three elements providing — Threat Detection and Tracking, Launching and Intercept functions. The Threat Detection and Warning subsystem consists of several sensors, including flat-panel radars, placed at strategic locations around the protected vehicle, to provide full hemispherical coverage. Once an incoming threat is detected identified and verified, the Countermeasure Assembly is opened, the countermeasure device is positioned in the direction where it can effectively intercept the threat. Then, it is launched automatically into a ballistic trajectory to intercept the incoming threat at a relatively long distance.
The Trophy system is simply awesome. It protects vehicles like tanks 360 degree and above. This video demonstrates this Israeli developed system.
Trophy system will change the battlefield in a major way. The system has been installed in over 70% of the IDF’s main battle tanks and other important armored vehicles. The balance of approximately 30% will be completed in very short order. Numerous armies have indicated a very serious interest in the Trophy system, but so far, the IDF is not prepared to share the technology with anyone.
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A key Department of Defense network goes down. Air-traffic control collapses. Trains collide. Financial data systems are in ruins. Lethal clouds of chlorine gas drift from plants in New Jersey and Delaware.Thousands of Americans are dead — and the looting and food shortages haven’t even begun.
| READ: “An electronic Pearl Harbor?,” by David Scharfenberg |
“In all the wars America has fought, no nation has ever done this kind of damage to our cities,” writes Richard A. Clarke in his recently published book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It. “A sophisticated cyber-war attack by one of several nation-states could do that today, in 15 minutes.”Coming from the man who waged an often lonely pre-9/11 campaign to warn his superiors in the Clinton and Bush White Houses of the threat posed by Al Qaeda, the admonition is difficult to ignore.
But could a handful of hackers really cripple the world’s sole superpower? Could we truly be 15 minutes from calamity?
It is a question as difficult as it is chilling. But one thing is clear: we’re vulnerable.
Wired to death?
Our financial, health, and national-defense systems are heavily wired. Our power grid and telecommunications systems, too. And protecting that giant digital architecture is extraordinarily difficult. However vigilant our defense — and it is sorely lacking — hackers need find only one vulnerability to break in and wreak havoc.
That havoc can come in the form of direct, material harm: the so-called “denial of service” attacks that shut down individual Web sites and large swaths of the Internet, or the multi-million-dollar bank robberies currently occupying the FBI and dozens of other law-enforcement agencies around the world.
But it can also come in the form of espionage: a 2008 infiltration of the United States Central Command that a high-ranking Pentagon official called “the most significant breach of US military computers ever,” last year’s mining of Google’s computers for trade secrets and information on Chinese dissidents, or WikiLeaks’ disclosure of huge troves of classified documents on the Afghanistan war effort.
Foreign hackers have already probed our power grid for weaknesses and some in the intelligence community worry Russian and Chinese cyber snoops have left behind “logic bombs” that could be set off in the event of a conflict, plunging New York, Washington, or Los Angeles into darkness.
There is also heavy concern about a hardware and software supply chain that stretches overseas — providing ample opportunity for foreign agents to plant “trap doors” in weapons and other vital systems that can be kicked open when the time is right.
That sort of tampering is one theory behind how Israeli intelligence seemingly disabled Syrian radar in advance of a 2007 bombing raid on an apparent North Korean–built nuclear weapons facility.
And all these threats — “trap doors,” “logic bombs,” theft — are only what we know about. “It’s also the things we don’t know,” says Rhode Island Representative James Langevin, co-chairman of the House Cyber Security Caucus. “What is the threat out there tomorrow that we haven’t anticipated, can’t anticipate?”
Take, for instance, the “denial of service” strike on Estonia.
Tensions between Russia and the former Soviet satellite flared in the spring of 2007 over a giant bronze statue of a Red Army soldier in the Estonian capital of Tallinn. And after ethnic Russians clashed with nationalists on what became known as Bronze Night, authorities moved the statue to a more protected spot.
That, of course, only set off waves of outrage in the Russian media and political circles. And before long, hackers were knitting together tens of thousands of “zombie” computers — their owners unaware — in a massive “botnet” attack on Estonia’s digital infrastructure, cutting off access to online banking, media, and government services.
The Estonians, after some cyber sleuthing, claimed the code behind the attack had been written on Cyrillic-language keyboards traced back to Russia. But who, precisely, in Russia was to blame?
Some Russian officials suggested that “patriotic hackers” independent of the government may have been responsible. Observers speculated that organized crime — with its phalanx of high-level hackers — might have played a role. Either, of course, could have operated with the tacit support of the government. But the Kremlin denied involvement and stonewalled on the investigation.
Three years later, the origins of what may be the highest profile cyber attack in history remain a mystery.
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‘One of the most serious . . . challenges we face’
Washington is hardly blind to the danger.
TubePress
© 2010 Roger Knecht