50 Interlocked Firms Control Global Wealth

AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world currently, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. 

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The 9 page report is here.

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based." Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance. The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues. When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network.

"In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Understanding More About Our Divided Brain

Renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our 'divided brain' has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society. Taken from a lecture given by Iain McGilchrist, and illustrated as part of the RSA's free public events program. View the full lecture here.

Economic Differences vs. Religion

This interesting chart was published by Aidwatch, taken from a NY Times Magazine article looking at economic differences based on religion in the United States.

The most affluent of the major religions — including secularism — is Reform Judaism. Sixty-seven percent of Reform Jewish households made more than $75,000 a year at the time the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life collected the data, compared with only 31 percent of the population as a whole. Hindus were second, at 65 percent, and Conservative Jews were third, at 57 percent. 

On the other end are Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists. In each case, 20 percent or fewer of followers made at least $75,000. Remarkably, the share of Baptist households making $40,000 or less is roughly the same as the share of Reform Jews making $100,000 or more.

Overall, Protestants, who together are the country’s largest religious group, are poorer than average and poorer than Catholics. That stands in contrast to the long history, made famous by Max Weber, of Protestant nations generally being richer than Catholic nations. 

Many factors are behind the discrepancies among religions, but one stands out. The relationship between education and income is so strong that you can almost draw a line through the points on this graph. Social science rarely produces results this clean. Read full article here.

Bringing Light to the Poor, One Liter at a Time

Isang Litrong Liwanag (A Liter of Light), is a sustainable lighting project which aims to bring the eco-friendly Solar Bottle Bulb to disprivileged communities nationwide. 

 

Designed and developed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Solar Bottle Bulb is based on the principles of Appropriate Technologies – a concept that provides simple and easily replicable technologies that address basic needs in developing 

communities.

Reading 5 Million Books

Have you played with Google Labs' NGram Viewer? It's an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel in this TED briefing show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words. 

 

 

You can use the calculator at this link.

The American Debt Crisis

A panel discussion concerning the current state of Global and American affairs...

The Paradox of Time

Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.

He covers all this in more detail in his book the Time Paradox. A short preview and lecture is excerpted below:

Your every significant choice -- every important decision you make -- is determined by a force operating deep inside your mind: your perspective on time -- your internal, personal time zone. This is the most influential force in your life, yet you are virtually unaware of it. Once you become aware of your personal time zone, you can begin to see and manage your life in exciting new ways.

In The Time Paradox, Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd draw on thirty years of pioneering research to reveal, for the first time, how your individual time perspective shapes your life and is shaped by the world around you. Further, they demonstrate that your and every other individual's time zones interact to create national cultures, economics, and personal destinies.

You will discover what time zone you live in through Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd's revolutionary tests. Ask yourself:

• Does the smell of fresh-baked cookies bring you back to your childhood?

• Do you believe that nothing will ever change in your world?

• Do you believe that the present encompasses all and the future and past are mere abstractions?

• Do you wear a watch, balance your checkbook, and make to-do lists -- every day?

• Do you believe that life on earth is merely preparation for life after death?

• Do you ruminate over failed relationships?

• Are you the life of every party -- always late, always laughing, and always broke?

These statements are representative of the seven most common ways people relate to time, each of which, in its extreme, creates benefits and pitfalls. The Time Paradox is a practical plan for optimizing your blend of time perspectives so you get the utmost out of every minute in your personal and professional life as well as a fascinating commentary about the power and paradoxes of time in the modern world.

No matter your time perspective, you experience these paradoxes. Only by understanding this new psychological science of time zones will you be able to overcome the mental biases that keep you too attached to the past, too focused on immediate gratification, or unhealthily obsessed with future goals. Time passes no matter what you do -- it's up to you to spend it wisely and enjoy it well.

Documentaries to See Before You Die

Over the past two decades the documentary film has graduated into mainstream cinema, becoming a major box office draw and an important part of contemporary culture.

To celebrate this new age of the cinematic documentary, Current TV has commissioned a brand-new series that explores the most powerful, memorable and moving documentary feature films to have hit our cinema screens in recent years.

The shows count down from fifty to one, eventually revealing what our panel of preeminent film critics, academics and industry insiders has chosen as the most entertaining, powerful and influential modern documentary. However, this is not your average list show. 

Renowned documentarian Morgan Spurlock embarked on a road trip to track down the filmmakers and characters behind some of the most remarkable moments in contemporary cinema. Along the way, he met maverick directors and eccentric contributors, traveled to iconic locations and explored the impact that the documentaries have made on both their subjects and society.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this list. A recent article in the New Yorker by Richard Brody suggests alternatives that might have been included.

The whole collection describing the films has been captured in Youtube short segments, and can be viewed at this link when you are looking for ideas on some film stimulation for a quiet evening as winter approaches.

What the Future Holds for American Children

What more can be said...

Trial and Error is How Progess Happens

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. 

In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.

Mandatory US Government Spending Explosion

A recently issued Congressional Research Service report analyzing the projected growth of US mandatory government spending had several very frightening graphs.  Mandatory spending includes those funds "mandated" by law.  

Most people know about social security and medicare, but these programs include government and military veteran pensions, and about 8 income security programs.

As can be noted in F2 below, there has been a major increase from the 38% of the total funding from back into the 1970s.  After a huge spike last year, even with the reduction, we are currently to close to 62%  will a slow rise going forward. (click to enlarge)

This means that unless there is a change to the laws requiring this spending, then all the US Congress is really addressing in their current scrabbles is the smaller 38% left over. This also includes a growing annual interest payment on the ballooning public debt. 

Of the less than 1/3 remaining of the budget, all defense, environment, education and myriad other services must be funded. Some projections of this mandatory share suggest it will be reaching close to 80% in another 30 years if left unchecked.

House Edges

I grew up in the Reno-Tahoe axis.  Given my early exposure to the fantastic local funding capabilities from gaming (i.e. jobs for parents, no Nevada income tax, tourists pay for city services), I soon realized only the house wins in the long run.  Luckily gambling, like cigarettes, remained off my preferred plate of vices.

Recently, debate in Congress over the legalization of online poker has been heating up. The clamor is a direct result of April 15, 2011, dubbed "Black Friday" in the poker community. On this date, the FBI shut down the three largest online poker sites, seized their assets, and charged the founders with felonies.

Poker is the most popular form of Internet gambling by far, so the reverberations throughout its community have been the largest. It is also the only form of gambling that can legitimately be considered more a game of skill than of chance, a key difference being emphasized by advocates of legalization.

The odds in any form of gambling can be boiled down to the house edge, or the advantage the house has over the player. For example: the house edge in Blackjack, when played with proper strategy, is 0.8%. So for every $100 you "invest" in the game, you'd expect $99.20 back. Poker differs in that it's played against other competitors rather than the house, so the house edge is in the form of a "rake," or cut of the pot, which is typically around 5%.

Obviously, this is a raw deal for the patrons. With the exception of poker players, all gamblers are guaranteed to lose over the long run. Even poker is a zero-sum game, with the vast majority of the crowd losing money. Given these facts, it's conceivable that Congress just wants to prevent us from squandering our wealth.

Of course, the government itself offers gambling in the form of lotteries. If our benevolent Big Brother really wants to protect us from the usurious advantages of online casinos, its own gambling systems should at least offer better odds. Do they?

Not exactly. In fact, it's tough to overstate just how horrible state lottery odds really are. Your odds are 7,500% better playing craps than buying the average state lottery ticket.

We can draw many conclusions from this data, but two stand out the most. First of all, the free market provides overwhelmingly superior and cheaper gambling entertainment than does the government. Second, the government's professed intention of saving us from ourselves is clearly a guise. In reality, it could be perceived that they attempt to eliminate or assimilate competition.

The full article by Dan Steinhart from Casey Research is linked here.

How the U.S. Economic Game Really Works

With all the economic confusion in the play by play media commentaries, I think many people finally just give up on trying to understand the action. But, when you get rid of all the $50 words, cut through the hubris of obfuscation, the world of human financial interactions is actually quite straight-forward. The question is why generations have been seduced by the machinations  of intensely selfish bankers and ivory tower economists?

An excellent 5 minute animated overview, although it is hard to say whether the Armageddon title is over-stretching the implications.  What do you think?

The Piano

This morning I happened across this poignant animated short - The Piano - created by Aidan Gibbons, with music by Yann Tiersen. Just listen for a few minutes...

Two Charts of Upward Momentum

Picked up these 2 interesting charts from Ed Steer's (Casey Research) daily update some days ago. It seems that although the middle class is steadily losing ground, that the wealthy continue to have plenty of disposable income.

Note the same up trends in Food Stamp Participation (above) and the rising value of Tiffany stock due to rising sales (below) although unfortunately the stamps are much steeper.

Drawing on the US Emergency Oil Reserve

In the past few days, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has come into the news again.  An announcement that oil might be released from this stockpile, was enough to drop the price of oil and gasoline significantly.  This diagram below, courtesy of Reuters, provides a quick overview of the storage situation.

This reserve has only been accessed twice previously - both in emergency circumstances that are not evident this time (other than the President's low polling numbers).  In both of those cases, only a small percentage of the oil approved for use was actually needed.

As an interesting aside, recently on a cruise I befriended 2 very experienced oil-field engineers.  They did not have the above view of the reserve quality, but rather stated quite clearly that the solid (unleakable) underground salt caverns were a myth and that most of the oil stored in these sites will never be available for use.  

I have not seen any further evidence to support this, however, it is food for thought...

U.S. Crime Rates Falling or Rising?

INTUITIVE theories are often easier to believe in than to prove. For instance: conventional wisdom says that the crime rate should rise during a recession. When people are out of work and out of money, the thinking goes, they turn to crime. But the evidence backing this theory is at best equivocal.

Excerpt from The Economist

There seem to be some links between crime and economic conditions, but they are neither as direct nor clear as one might assume. Crime rose during the Roaring Twenties then fell in the Depression. 

America’s economy expanded and crime rates rose in the 1960s. Rates fell throughout the 1990s, when America’s economy was healthy, but they kept falling during the recession in the early 2000s. Read full story here.

However, other studies I have read indicate that people who watch a lot of television, especially crime drama, believe that crime rates are much higher than in reality.  It seems that exposing the mind to an over-emphasis of anything sways critical thinking toward that interpretation of life.

The Hourglass of Human Population

Earth will soon be home to seven billion humans. If you find that hard to fathom, try grasping how many have ever walked the planet. That’s what American demographer Carl Haub wanted to find out when, in 1975, he heard someone say that 75 percent of the people who’d ever been born were alive at that time. Dubious, he set out to disprove it, taking two main things into account:

(1) the assumed dawn of humanity and

(2) average populations at different periods of time. 

Using 50,000 B.C. as his starting point, Haub applied crude birthrates—the number of annual births per thousand people—to each population set, then added them. 

His estimate? In 1975, 103 billion people had lived, but only 4 percent of them were alive at that time. 

Applied to 2011, says Haub, those numbers are 108 billion, and 6.4 percent.  

—Extract from a National Geographic item by Catherine Zuckerman.

Commuting on cheap gas

American media continues to complain and whine about high fuel prices. Looking at the chart below shows just how cheap gasoline is in the United States.  I've been paying over $8 a gallon here in Central Europe for the past decade.   Of course, money can be saved by people living closer to their employment and venturing out into public transportation.

 

The fact is that American percentage of income spent on fuel has increased in the past year, but it is likely that this will be an ongoing phenomena.

Graphs excerpted from The Economist linked here.

Putting Your Name on the Map

There’s nothing quite like seeing a familiar name on a street sign that brings a smile to your face or perhaps puts you at ease in a new place. Stephen Van Worley has created an interactive mapping site that shows you everywhere your name appears on a street, town, park, river and more.

Data Pointed is the home of artist and scientist Stephen Von Worley's data visualization research; a journal of interesting information imagery and news from around the world; and a place where you can spend a few minutes, have a laugh or two, and discover something new. He accesses Google Earth and OpenStreetMap. 

Note the map below for the name KELLY.

Access the link here to search for your name.

Features:

Worldwide Coverage: Yes, Virginia, this time, we really did search every corner of the earth for your name.

More Names: 3,000+ 10,000+ first names, sourced from the US SSA, UK ONS, and Wikipedia. We even tossed in a few pet names, so that you can grab Tigger or Fido and share some quality anthropogeographical time.

All Features: We included every matching feature from OpenStreetMap, of any type. Most are streets, but there’s also castles, caves, and other intriguing things. At first, we planned on filtering out restaurants and retail, but after extensive philosophical debate, they made the cut. For some, like San Francisco Bay area Zacharys and Barneys, this policy works out. On the flip side, to anyone named Chase or Denny, apologies in advance.

Is Your Security Worth the Trade-off?

Bruce Schneier addresses the rationale behind personal attempts to create individual security. Are you really secure? Or do you just believe you are? How do you trade off the likelihood of protection from danger versus the cost trade-off?

Another excellent presentation from TED...

The Stark Power and Beauty of Volcanic Eruption

Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate the primal force of Mother Nature in action.  These are a selection of wire service photos of the recent eruption in the Chilean Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain, about 575 miles south of the capital, Santiago.

The link to the Daily Mail article is here.

Why the Recession Continues

There has been a lot of speculation in the American press why after months of quantitative easing (money creation by the Fed from nothing)that the economy has not picked up. In fact, it takes two elements for this to work:

One is the amount of money in circulation. As you see by the graph below, this has exploded in the last year.

But, the other elements is what is called money velocity - the rate at which people spend and turnover the money in their possession. Just like goods sitting on the shelf in a store, real money is made by how often the products turn-over. Just sitting there does no good - it is dead value. As you will see from the graph below, the money velocity has dropped to an extremely low rate as people hold onto cash and savings because of uncertainty. Likewise, very little borrowing is going on that would also increase potential for velocity.

Thus the two elements cancel each other out and the recession continues. The question is whether the Fed will keep pushing on this string and re-open the values with round #3?

A correlation between well-being and wealth

FOR more than 70 years, economists have been fixated with measuring economic output. Their chosen measure, gross domestic product, has limitations—it takes no account of natural-resource depletion and excludes unpaid services such as volunteering. 

On May 24th the OECD launched its alternative measure of well-being which includes 20 different indicators across 11 sectors in its 34 member countries, from life satisfaction to air pollution. It has produced an interactive tool (link here) which allows users to change the weight of each sector according to their own view of its importance.

The chart below (courtesy of The Economist) shows the results of its headline Better Life index (which is equally weighted) plotted against GDP per person at purchasing-power parity (which adjusts GDP for differences in the cost of living across countries). 

Money may not buy you happiness. But it can buy a strong correlation with a fancy new index that aims to put a number on contentment.

World's Population Pyramid is Changing Shape.

The world's population pyramid is changing shape. Another great presentation by The Economist.

THE world’s population will reach 7 billion by the end of October, according to the latest projections from the United Nations. For the first time the UN has attempted to look as far ahead as 2100, using various assumptions about how fertility and mortality rates might change over the years.

The average of these estimates suggests that the global population will cross 10 billion by 2085. By 2100, 22.3% of people will be aged 65 or over, up from just 7.6% in 2010. 

The bulk of population growth is expected to come from the developing world. Africa’s population will rise from 1 billion in 2010 to 3.6 billion in 2100. In 1950, 32% of the world’s people lived in today’s rich countries. By 2100, only 13% will.

Are You Caught in a Filter Bubble?

Eli Pariser discusses a growing issue in his TED lecture. What important information are you no longer getting because of your invisible filter bubble?

Glorious Manhattan

Recently the New Yorker published an online video of Josh Owens. He spent the first month and a half of spring staying at eleven different Manhattan hotels, shooting from their windows and roofs for around twelve hours every day, weather permitting. 

The interval between frames as Owens shot them was anywhere from five seconds to a full minute, and they are sometimes accelerated over 700 times.

Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

At the End of a Long Continum of Progress

GEOLOGISTS tend to treat mankind as a temporary phenomenon of no great significance for the underlying structure of the earth. This, argue some, is a mistake. 

Our various interventions in the surface of the earth should really be considered as the dawn of a new, man-centred geological age: the Anthropocene. 

Here is an updated timeline for the earth, courtesy of The Economist, taking industrial man into account. (click to enlarge)

See the longer Economist article here...

Rare Earths - The Secret Ingredients of Everything

I became interested in the rare earths about 2 years ago from an investment point of view.  From smart phones to hybrid vehicles to cordless power drills, devices we all desire are made with a pinch of rare earths—exotic elements that right now come mostly from China.

National Geographic just ran a short spread on the minerals by Tim Folger in the June issue linked here.

An extract of the intro is below...

Most of us would be hard-pressed to locate Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, or Guangdong on a map. Yet many of the high-tech devices we depend on—cell phones, laptops, and hundreds of others—would not exist without an obscure group of elements mined, sometimes illegally, in those three and other regions of China.

China Now Has A Monopoly Producing 97% of All Rare Earths

Rare earths, as the elements are called, were discovered beginning in the late 18th century as oxidized minerals—hence "earths." They're actually metals, and they aren't really rare; they're just scattered. A handful of dirt from your backyard would probably contain a smidgen, maybe a few parts per million. The rarest rare earth is nearly 200 times more abundant than gold. But deposits large and concentrated enough to be worth mining are indeed rare.

The list of things that contain rare earths is almost endless. Magnets made with them are much more powerful than conventional magnets and weigh less; that's one reason so many electronic devices have gotten so small. Rare earths are also essential to a host of green machines, including hybrid cars and wind turbines. The battery in a single Toyota Prius contains more than 20 pounds of the rare earth element lanthanum; the magnet in a large wind turbine may contain 500 pounds or more of neodymium. The U.S. military needs rare earths for night-vision goggles, cruise missiles, and other weapons.

"They're all around you," says Karl Gschneidner, a senior metallurgist with the Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, who has studied rare earth elements for more than 50 years. "The phosphors in your TV—the red color comes from an element called europium. The catalytic converter on your exhaust system contains cerium and lanthanum. They're hidden unless you know about them, so most people never worried about them as long as they could keep buying them."

Now a lot of people are worried. Read full story here.  An earlier article from 2010 is linked here.

For those interested in Rare Earth as an investment opportunity, listen to this James Dines interview at Financial Sense linked here.

America's Moment of Truth

Below is an excerpt from the preamble. The 60 page report is here ....  Why is this being ignored?

Listen to an persuading interview with former Senator Alan Simpson, report lead author at this link.

Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have found the courage to do right by our children’s future. Deep down, every American knows we face a moment of truth once again. We cannot play games or put off hard choices any longer. Without regard to party, we have a patriotic duty to keep the promise of America to give our children and grandchildren a better life.

Our challenge is clear and inescapable: America cannot be great if we go broke. Our businesses will not be able to grow and create jobs, and our workers will not be able to compete successfully for the jobs of the future without a plan to get this crushing debt burden off our backs.

Ever since the economic downturn, families across the country have huddled around kitchen tables, making tough choices about what they hold most dear and what they can learn to live without. They expect and deserve their leaders to do the same. The American people are counting on us to put politics aside, pull together not pull apart, and agree on a plan to live within our means and make America strong for the long haul.

As members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, we spent the past eight months studying the same cold, hard facts. Together, we have reached these unavoidable conclusions: The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. Everything must be on the table. And Washington must lead.

We come from different backgrounds, represent different regions, and belong to different parties, but we share a common belief that America’s long-term fiscal gap is unsustainable and, if left unchecked, will see our children and grandchildren living in a poorer, weaker nation.

Over the course of our deliberations, the urgency of our mission has become all the more apparent. The contagion of debt that began in Greece and continues to sweep through Europe shows us clearly that no economy will be immune. If the U.S. does not put its house in order, the reckoning will be sure and the devastation severe.

We have worked to offer an aggressive, fair, balanced, and bipartisan proposal – a proposal as serious as the problems we face. None of us likes every element of our plan, and each of us had to tolerate provisions we previously or presently oppose in order to reach a principled compromise. We were willing to put our differences aside to forge a plan because our nation will certainly be lost without one.

We do not pretend to have all the answers. 

We offer our plan as the starting point for a serious national conversation in which every citizen has an interest and all should have a say. Our leaders have a responsibility to level with Americans about the choices we face, and to enlist the ingenuity and determination of the American people in rising to the challenge.

We believe neither party can fix this problem on its own, and both parties have a responsibility to do their part. The American people are a long way ahead of the political system in recognizing that now is the time to act. We believe that far from penalizing their leaders for making the tough choices, Americans will punish politicians for backing down – and well they should.

In the weeks and months to come, countless advocacy groups and special interests will try mightily through expensive, dramatic, and heart-wrenching media assaults to exempt themselves from shared sacrifice and common purpose. The national interest, not special interests, must prevail. We urge leaders and citizens with principled concerns about any of our recommendations to follow what we call the Becerra Rule: Don’t shoot down an idea without offering a better idea in its place.

After all the talk about debt and deficits, it is long past time for America’s leaders to put up or shut up. The era of debt denial is over, and there can be no turning back. We sign our names to this plan because we love our children, our grandchildren, and our country too much not to act while we still have the chance to secure a better future for all our fellow citizens.

Doing It Wrong All These Years

A wonderful 6 minute TED presentation that shows that assumptions and techniques we take on from childhood, even when wrong, stay with us for decades... how do you tie your shoes?

Jobs and Student Debt

As depicted below going back to 1948, typically job loss in the USA was a fairly deep trough with recovery coming relatively quickly.  Not so, this time...

Meanwhile, while out of work, many people have returned to school.  Lacking available funds to pay out-of-pocket, the use of student loans is expanding quickly.  There have been some reports that the total of student loan debt has now surpassed normal credit cards.  Of course, these are averages.  Many students have little or no debt, while others are well over $100,000 after graduation.

Making Money on a Savings Account

Are you tired of close to zero percent interest in your US dollar savings account? Perhaps it is time to move some of those dollars into other currencies. As the chart below details, in a one year period from last June, if you had transferred some of the dollars into Swiss Francs you would be up about 20% already. 

Even the Euro has been up almost 15% in that period. Although not shown, the Canadian and Australian currencies have also had strong runs.  What this means... if you changed $10,000 into Francs last June, you would currently have the equivalent of $12,000 with the 20% gain.  

And now, you do not even have to leave the country to set up an account. There are now Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) you can buy through your broker just like a stock that mirror these currencies.  Of course, when the dollar strengthens these currencies lose value.  However, as noted here, the US dollar has been in a fairly strong down-trend since1933.