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A Basic Illustration Of How The Blind Pursuit Of A Debt Funded Diploma Can Lead To Personal & Intellectual Insolvency
The same hypothetical leveraged positions expressed as a percentage gain or loss...
Despite extensive, self-defeating, harsh and punitive austerity measures that have combined with a lack of true economic stimulus, Greece has (to date) failed to achieve Primary Balance. For the non-economists in the audience, primary balance is the elimination of a primary deficit, yet the absence of a primary surplus, ex. the midpoint between deficit and surplus before taking into consideration interest payments.
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The primary balance looks at the structural issues a country may have. Government expenditures have outstripped revenues ever since 2007 and have gotten worse nearly every year since, despite 3 bailouts a restructuring, austerity and a default!
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Part 1 of this series illustrated exactly how those who pursue levered "know that" can and likely will fall into the exact same structural insolvency by having their fixed expenses born from the pursuit of the diploma on a leveraged basis outstrip their income. Reference this excerpt from How To Profit From The Impending Bursting Of The Education Bubble, pt 1 [21]:
...assume a $40k per year tuition for a 4 year business management degree, purchased with money borrowed at 6% (from our dear government guaranteed lenders (SLM, et. al.), deferred for and average of 2 years. An oversimplified straight calculation puts you roughly $178,000 in debt upon graduation for a piece of paper that would fetch you roughly $43,000 per year. Reference ehow.com:
In July 2009, people who hold a bachelor's of science (BS) in business management averaged $39,551 during their first year of employment
[30] and $43,022 for the first one to four years. A professional with a BS in business management typically averaged $78,669 once they reached 20 years of employment.
Read more: Average Salaries for a Bachelor's Business Degree | eHow.com [31] http://www.ehow.com/facts_5240719_average-salaries-bachelor_s-business-degree.html#ixzz2Gw6sriN5 [31]
Real wages have likely dropped since then, but even using the nominal assumptions above you would have been driven into the hole when factoring in real life expenses of:
- Taxes: Yes, you'd have to subtract local, state and federal taxes from said monies... At roughly 35% (bound to go up after we finish this cliff nonsense), we're now talking $27,964 average over four years. That puts you in the hole to the tune of roughly $12,035 per year you spent on that degree.
- Living expenses: Food, shelter (rent), clothing, transportation. In a NYC, even assuming the much less expensive outer boroughs,
Combined, we're talking roughly $3,000 per month or so, assuming you won't take in roommates. If you do, you can drop that figure to about $2,500 per month. Using the lower bound of this assumption, you are underwater (structural deficit) to the tune of about $2,000 per year. Please keep in mind that primary balance calculations and structural deficits don't take into consideration interest payments (for the sake of comparison). The underwater comment does not take into consideration the actual paying back of your loan yet, either.
So, on the fifth year following your freshman orientation, assuming you studied well, you would have laid out $176,000 facing annual debt service of about $12,000 or so - offset by a net income stream of roughly $28,000 to cover roughly $30,000 of living expenses. The negative $2,000 per year cash flow would result in a chart that is very, very similar to the Greek charts featured above.
So, why do these numbers look so bad? Well, the answer to that question lies in the value of the asset that knowledge seekers encumber themselves to acquire. The levered purchase of depreciating assets or assets with fictitiously high values is bound to lead to insolvency. Enter the....
Topic Of Knowledge
Knowledge that vs Knowledge How
- The collapse of Bear Stearns in January 2008 (2 months before Bear Stearns fell, while trading in the $100s and still had buy ratings and investment grade AA or better from the ratings agencies): Is this the Breaking of the Bear? [34]
- The warning of Lehman Brothers before anyone had a clue!!! (February through May 2008): Is Lehman really a lemming in disguise? [35] Thursday, February 21st, 2008 | Web chatter on Lehman Brothers [36] Sunday, March 16th, 2008 (It would appear that Lehman’s hedges are paying off for them. The have the most CMBS and RMBS as a percent of tangible equity on the street following BSC.
- The fall of commercial real estate in general (September of 2007) and the collapse of General Growth Properties [nation's 2nd largest mall owner] in particular (November 2007): The Commercial Real Estate Crash Cometh, and I know who is leading the way! [37]
What Is This Really About?
In the mean time and in between time, subscribers [40] can glean my view of one of the big private post secondary educators who is having a problem with volatile earnings that are probably going to get worse.
[41]Education Co. [41] 1-3-2013
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