WHAT COULD GO WRONG? So America has a President Goldman Sachs, Italy has a Prime Minister Goldman Sachs, and the European Central Bank will now be headed by a former Goldman Sachs banker.

#OCCUPYFAIL: CONVENIENTLY ENOUGH, #OWS HAS THAT MUCH MONEY IN THE BANK: Occupy Wall Street costs local businesses $479,400!

UH OH: Thailand Floods Cause World Hard Drive Shortage.

On the other hand, the price for the G-Drive Slim is only up by 5 bucks. I ordered a second one a couple of weeks ago and paid $89.99. Now it’s $94.10.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Cook writes: “Just had a desktop locally built that included two WD 1 TB hard drives. The guy who built it said they were going up roughly 10 bucks/day and that it was gonna get a worse. Put in the order on a Thursday and on Friday they had already gone up.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: And reader Kim Sommer writes: “I’m at Best Buy. They had an ad in today’s paper for a Seagate 1TB desktop hard drive for $54.99. Not in the shelf. Not available to order. Not even a bait and switch since there was nothing to switch to.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: Tomorrow’s Climate “Briefing”, Popcorn Advised.

MICKEY KAUS: “Was a representative of the Obama administration ‘literally sitting in the room’ for recent UAW/GM negotiations—as a newsletter to members of a UAW local said. Or was the union report just a ‘misprint,’ as an official of the local now claims?”

TODAY ONLY SALE: Firefly: The Complete Series, on Blu-Ray and DVD. (Bumped, because hey, it’s Firefly.).

POLL: WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE READ TO YOUR CHILDREN?

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday deals on Computers and Software.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Police arrest Chapel Hill protesters who occupied vacant business.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Portland Cleared Out: Onlooker Taunts “The Whole World is Laughing!” Heh.

WHAT BILL GATES THINKS ABOUT DRUG COMPANIES.

Says Gates: “If you 15 years ago had said, ‘How important are vaccines to these various businesses?’ They would have said, “You know, our drug businesses are going to do so well. And vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues.’”

But vaccines, Gates argues, “actually have more impact on health than all the new drugs.” And the pharmaceutical businesses didn’t do as well as expected. For Pfizer, for instance, a big bet on a Lipitor follow-up went down in flames when the drug turned out to increase, not decrease, the death rate. But now Pfizer is betting big on a vaccine, called Prevnar, against the pneumococcus bacteria. After Lipitor loses patent protection, Prevnar may well be the company’s top seller.

Read the whole thing.

IS IT TIME FOR a renewed Tea Party PR push? Well, maybe. But they say when your opponent is committing suicide, you should keep your mouth shut.

CHINA: China’s most famous dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, speaks out about the ordeal of his Detention.

HMM: A Romney/McDonnell 2012 Presidential Ticket Is (Practically) a Done Deal.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Men’s Shoes. I’m surprised to see ice cleats at #2.

NANCY PELOSI VS. JON STEWART.

CONNECTICUT POWER OUTAGE: Blame the regulators. “But the politicians keep hyperventilating for publicity, overlooking that every aspect of the outage — from tree trimming to the number of repair crews to the general reliability of the power grid to the lavish salaries of power company executives — has always been subject to the jurisdiction of the state regulatory commission, recently renamed the Public Utility Regulatory Authority. That is, CL&P and all other utilities can hardly do anything without state government’s review and approval. Regulation may have been inadequate, but Connecticut’s elected officials always have had primary responsibility here. If CL&P hasn’t done a good job, then state government hasn’t supervised the company well either.”

ANN ALTHOUSE: Huntsman shouldn’t complain, as he’s getting more questions than Thaddeus McCotter got, even though McCotter was much more interesting, and doing no worse in the polls.

Related: “That clip was so satisfying that I need a cigarette!”

WHY WASHINGTON SUCKS AT VENTURE CAPITAL: Before Solyndra, a long history of failed government energy projects. “Some economists, executives and financiers — as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu — argue that the government must play a role because certain technologies have non-financial benefits, such as producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions or easing U.S. reliance on foreign oil. The semiconductor industry is often held up as a model of how government money can help build a new type of economy. But others argue that the history of government attempts to reach for the holy grail of new energy technology — a history that features both political parties — is not inspiring.”

This story is worth reading, but when you read between the lines it also seems like an effort to spread the blame around and do political damage control on Solyndra. But Solyndra isn’t just a case of bad judgment. The thing to remember is that the Solyndra deal was known to be a bad one for the government at the time, was gone ahead with anyway at the behest of the White House, and funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the pocket of a major Obama donor.

BURT RUTAN IS UP TO SOMETHING COOL. “The engineer told the Experimental Aviation Association he is tinkering with a design influenced to some extent by the lakes and rivers of Idaho, where he now lives after spending more than 40 years in the Mojave Desert. He also mentioned being influenced by the unusual Russian air/watercraft, like the MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan, he saw shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Woman Raped At #OccupyPhiladelphia.

MORE ON THE POYNTER/ROMENESKO SAGA, HERE AND HERE.

Plus this: “Turns out that just before Jim Romenesko’s bosses at Poynter decided the way he attributed his sources for them for 12 years suddenly violated their rules, they tried to get him to agree not to take ads on his future website.” Hmm.

Meanwhile, how many people will visit a Romenesko-free Poynter site? Dozens, I’m sure.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is a soy-based diet “cruel and unusual?”

SO I’M NOT SURE WHETHER TO FILE THIS UNDER “HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE” OR “HOUSING BUBBLE UPDATE.” Animal McMansion: Students Trade Dorm for Suburban Luxury.

While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Ms. Alarab, a management major, and Ms. Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining Jacuzzi behind the rapidly depreciating McMansion that they have rented for a song.

Here in Merced, a city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and one of the country’s hardest hit by home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities. . . .

The finances of subdivision life are compelling: the university estimates yearly on-campus room and board at $13,720 a year, compared with roughly $7,000 off-campus. Sprawl rats sharing a McMansion — with each getting a bedroom and often a private bath — pay $200 to $350 a month each, depending on the amenities.

Gurbir Dhillon, a senior majoring in molecular cell biology, pays $70 more than his four housemates each month for the privilege of having what they enviously call “the penthouse suite” — a princely boudoir with a whirlpool tub worthy of Caesars Palace and a huge walk-in closet, which Mr. Dhillon has filled with baseball caps and T-shirts.

Or maybe it’s just a sign that today’s students know a good opportunity when they see one.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Court Rejects Occupy Sacramento’s Challenge to Ordinance Barring Park Use Between 11 pm and 5 am.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Showdown at Occupy Portland, western camps.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Harvard Day 3: 2 photographers, 2 cops, 0 occupants. Now that’s “exclusive,” even for Harvard.

IN BRITAIN, A BORDER FIASCO: “All but the most cursory checks were abandoned on passengers on British-registered coaches as they arrived at Dover, Britain’s biggest port. Instead of passports being scanned electronically, border guards checked that the picture matched the holder. It means they were not cross-checked to a computer database to establish if the holder was a wanted terrorist, criminal or immigration offender. The policy was in place for four years after being introduced when Labour was in power, but never disclosed to Parliament.”

Labour hasn’t been very good on immigration enforcement. Remember this?

The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to “open up the UK to mass migration” but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its “core working class vote”.

So they’re consistent, anyway.

#OCCUPYFAIL: 19 arrested as police clear Occupy Salt Lake from park.

KEEPING CLEAN WITH A superhydrophobic spray.

SHOCKING NEW DISCOVERIES FROM SCIENCE: “Research suggests that when men see a woman wearing very little they focus on her body and less on her mind.”

CHANGE: NASA Hitches a Ride on a Russian Craft, and Begins a New Dependent Phase.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg: NASA is not “hitching a ride.” “‘Hitching a ride’ implies that we are getting it for free. We are paying for taxi services, and because they are a monopoly provider, we are paying too much. But the problem isn’t buying rides, it’s that we’re paying too much for them, and not purchasing them from American providers. This is something that could be fixed within three years, but the Congress is cutting the funding to do so so that it can build a giant (in both size and cost) unneeded rocket that won’t fly for at least a decade.”

BUMMER: New Clot Drug From Merck Flops In Huge Trial.

VIDEO: What Occupy Wall Street Looks Like Now.

MATT RIDLEY: Is That Scientific Heretic A Genius — Or A Loon?

IN THE MAIL: From Steve White, Wolf Among the Stars.

PRIORITIES: Amid ailing economy, members of Congress delve into sports issues.

WHAT AMERICA NEEDS: A tactical sandwich. “In the midst of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, you have a tasty sandwich that stays fresh for up to five years.”

WELL, THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: Joe Biden: The First Guy We Called For Economic Advice Was Jon Corzine.

HOW’S THAT D.C. GUN-CONTROL WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Shots heard near White House; appears unrelated to Obama. “An AK-47 assault rifle was recovered from a car near the Roosevelt Bridge shortly after police started pursuing two vehicles fleeing from a section of Constitution Avenue near 16th street, where the shots were heard.” I wonder if it was one of those ATF guns. . . .

INVESTMENT ADVICE: “The only really safe investment is wine, at times like these. If it goes up, you make a profit; and if it goes down you can drink it. Whereas when your shares or your nickel futures crash, that’s that.” Plus: “The key to understanding the Eurozone crisis is this: the ECB aren’t incompetent; they are sadists.” Hmm. That seems improbable, but it does have a certain explanatory power . . . .

MORE ECONOMIC EDUCATION from Gene Simmons. “Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to human beings. The welfare state sounds wonderful but it doesn’t work.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Where I’ve Been, And How Newt’s Doing.

KOCH BROTHERS strike back.

BLUE-STATE POLITICOS: Raise taxes, but not on our constituents:

Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative whose district includes parts of the West Side and other affluent sections of Manhattan, introduced the Tax Equity Act in 2009, which proposed “to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for adjustments in the individual income tax rates to reflect regional differences in the cost of living.”

The bill mustered eight co-sponsors, all from New York except for Representative Jim Himes, who represents Fairfield County, Conn. It went nowhere.

In September, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi, but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York, and there ought to be some kind of scale based on the cost of living on how much you pay.”

Living in New York is a consumption decision.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Brown writes:

Perhaps someone should ask the good Congressmen why their districts have such high cost of living.

I had a friend who, while working for Matson in Hawaii, calculated how much shipping a container of toilet paper to Hawaii added to the price. It was 2 cents per 4-pack. But it as 30-50% more costly in Hawaii than the mainland. The cost came from warehousing, etc. But NYC doesn’t have the warehousing problem, they can keep all they need in Pennsylvania until it is just-in-time.

Real Estate costs? That does impose a threshold of entry higher than Mississippi, but there are already home price-based tax deductions. And the real estate cost is held high by difficulty and cost of building new housing.

So what could drive this COL difference? Labor costs in service industries, which are driven more by regulation than market? What about taxes and regulatory takings? But they already get a tax deduction of state and local taxes paid.

So the people in these districts deserve a cost of living tax break because they impose higher cost of living on themselves through their regional, state and local governance?

What should we call this tax break? The “Too stupid to govern themselves locally” adjustment?

I think we should end the deductibility of state and local taxes. Why subsidize inefficient governance?

21ST CENTURY ATTITUDES: Study finds women still prefer to take husband’s last name; 50 percent of those surveyed also supported a law requiring women to take their husband’s name. “The researchers found that more than two-thirds of Americans in the study said that it’s best if a woman takes her husband’s name upon marriage. The researchers expected that a majority of Americans would feel this way, Powell said, but they were more surprised to find that 50 percent supported a law requiring women to take their husband’s name.”

CNN PHOTOJOURNALISTS lose jobs in the face of competition from Amateurs.

UPDATE: Reader Eric Beeby writes:

That’s an interesting letter. First, it took them 3 years to assess and take an action?

In the real world (and surely the MSM is not the real world any more than academia is the real world) businesses looked at the crisis and took action 3 years ago in 2008. Second, some interesting language there: “They leave with our respect…”. They leave? How about, “We’re shoving them out the door with our respect…”

A fine and revealing example of the bureaucracy, lack of leadership, paralysis and hand wringing of a typical MSM. No wonder they resonate so well with the Big Government crowd.

Heh. Indeed.

CHANGE: China Adds a Spyglass in Space, Hints at More to Come.

THE EUROZONE DEBT CRISIS, risk, and regulators. “One possible story about the financial crisis is that an unusually rosy period of growth in the west taught us to expect–no, to need–an unsustainably high rate of low-risk return on assets. We made a whole lot of unsustainable promises during the boom years, most of them involving permanent increases in the ratio of non-workers to workers. Those promises required a very steady cash flow, but also (because of demographics) a very high rate of return.”

THE EUROPEAN UNION’S PROXY WAR:

It turns out that various politically active, generally far left-wing Israeli NGOs, some of which deny the very legitimacy of the Israeli government, get funding from various European governments (see this detailed NGO Monitor Report). Some of these organizations, for example, support the international “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” efforts against Israel. (Exactly why European governments fund NGOs whose views diametrically oppose the governments’ official policies vis a vis Israel is an interesting question that we’ll leave to another time).

These NGOs are often given special legitimacy in the international media because they are purportedly Israeli NGOs. NGO Monitor’s investigations show that many of them are, in fact, organizations with little if any domestic base within Israel and instead represent the views of the international far left with a fig leaf of Israeli leadership drawn from its domestic far left.

Israelis, tired of this rather subtle form of ideological warfare emanating from their purported friends among governments in Europe, are now considering a measure that would ban foreign government funding of political NGOs above a certain low level. Whether this particular measure is workable, and whether it’s the best way to deal with the situation, I’ll again leave for another time.

What’s striking, however, is the EU’s reaction.

Read the whole thing. And here’s some Proxy War background.

HMM: Iran Blast May Have Hit Missile Base.

ACROPOLIS NOW: Greece may be just the start: Other Eurozone countries are faltering, with far more worrying consequences.

NIALL FERGUSON: Europe’s Disaster Is Headed Our Way. “As an author who has just published a book on the crisis of Western civilization, I couldn’t really have asked for more: simultaneous crises in Athens and Rome, the cradles of the West’s law, languages, politics, and philosophy. . . . So why should Americans care about any of this? The first reason is that, with American consumers still in the doldrums of deleveraging, the United States badly needs buoyant exports if its economy is to grow at anything other than a miserably low rate. And despite all the hype about trade with the Chinese, U.S. exports to the European Union are nearly three times larger than to China. . . . But there’s more. Europe’s problem is not just that governments are overborrowed. There are an unknown number of European banks that are effectively insolvent if their holdings of government bonds are “marked to market”—in other words, valued at their current rock-bottom market prices. In our interconnected financial world, it would be very odd indeed if no U.S. institutions were affected by this.”

Plus this: “Today the U.S. gross federal debt stands at around 100 percent of GDP. Four years ago it was 62 percent. By 2016 the International Monetary Fund forecasts it will be 115 percent. Economists who should know better insist that this is not a problem because, unlike Italy, the United States can print its own money at will. All that means is that the U.S. reserves the right to inflate or depreciate away its debt. If I were a foreign investor—and half the debt in public hands is held by foreigners—I would not find that terribly reassuring.”

AT AMAZON, Pre-Black Friday Deals on Movies & TV.

ON THE LATEST GOP DEBATE (YES, THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE!): Ira Stoll comments. Also Bryan Preston. Plus, there seems general agreement that CBS was the big loser.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Police Clear Out Occupy Denver.

UPDATE: A firsthand report from Peter Ingemi.

MORE: Pam Geller and Jim Hoft Crash OccupyDenver Camp.

STEM FAIL: With all the higher education bubble talk, I agree that America would be better off if we graduated more people in science, technology, engineering, and math. But it’s not for everyone, and this cautionary tale is worth a look, especially together with this piece by Kenneth Anderson.

REX MURPHY ON THE NEWT GINGRICH RETHINK: “There is a threshold moment in some of our choices, and especially in some of our judgments about people. Sometimes that moment is experienced by a whole lot of us at once.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Pressure to leave mounts on Occupy camps.

WELL, IF YOU’RE GOING TO LIE ABOUT YOUR OBJECTIVITY, you can expect people to make hay out of exposing you as a liar.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste emails:

The problem isn’t that reporters are biased. They’re humans, and no human is completely objective.

The problem is that taken as a group reporters (and journalists) are overwhelmingly biased in one direction. If it were about fifty-fifty, half biased one way and half the other, then the industry as a whole would be pretty objective, representing all points of view.

But that’s not what we have.

No. And it’s made worse by their pretense that they’re presenting objective reality.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse deals on music.

EDUCATION: My Teacher Is An App: More kids than ever before are attending school from their living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. The result: A radical rethinking of how education works. Not a moment too soon. “The drive to reinvent school has also set off an explosive clash with teachers unions and backers of more traditional education. Partly, it’s a philosophical divide.” But mostly it’s about the Benjamins.

Related item here.

OBAMA AWARDS QUESTIONABLE $433 MILLION VACCINE CONTRACT to a top donor. “Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.”

And note this: SIGA’s stocks more than double since SEIU’s Andy Stern was hired on board. Can you say “crony capitalism?”

ARE YOU SURE YOU DON’T HAVE CAUSE AND EFFECT REVERSED HERE? How women are turning into Mean Girls because there aren’t enough good men out there.

#OCCUPYFAIL: “Ironic, isn’t it: woman is safer in meeting at the National Resturant Association than in a crowd at #OWS.”

GREEN FAIL: The American Corn Ethanol Disaster. Well, as a scheme for buying votes and lining pockets, it’s been a big success. Which seems to be how most of these “green” schemes turn out.

A BLOG THAT ANSWERS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who’s That Hot Ad Girl?

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Pelosi’s investments questioned in CBS report.

#OCCUPYFAIL: #OccupyDenver Is Weak Tea, No Party. “15-20 marchers abreast, with drums, claiming to be the 99%. Have an inverted American flag in the front row. ‘Support Socialism!’ screams one of them.”

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Women Aren’t Having Enough Sex, Says Science. “According to psychiatrist Dr. Naomi Greenblatt with the HealthyWomen organization, ‘hitting the skins’ may be as important as hitting the gym when it comes to preserving one’s youthful looks—and women aren’t doing enough of it.”

You can’t argue with science.

WRIST, SLAPPED: S.E.C. Disciplines Eight Employees Over Madoff Failure.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Mostly Peaceful Occupy Portland Closing Down Following Another Drug Overdose. It’s like the worst parts of the ’60s rerun, all in just a couple of weeks.

WANT A BETTER SEX LIFE? Try Yoga.

#OCCUPYFAIL: USING KIDS AS CANNON FODDER: Denver HS Teacher Brings Students to Join #OWS Mob As They Storm Conservative Conference (Video). She teaches at a private school where the tuition is $14K a year. One-percenter!

BETTER THAN A SMART CAR? Driving the Scion iQ.

EXCELLENT HEALTH ADVICE: Act Fast to Save Sight if Signs of Danger to the Retina Appear. “Modern treatments can do wonders if they are begun before the damage is irreversible. But a delay in getting to a retinal specialist can diminish the ability of even the best therapy to preserve or restore normal vision.”

DATING MISTAKES: Are you expecting men to act like women?

PARKINSON’S DISEASE and damaged mitochondria.

IN THE MAIL: Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Obama Administration’s Fast-And-Furious Excuse-Making.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Obama Votes “Present” on 20,000 Jobs.

UPDATE: CBS Poll: Obama disapproval rating on economy at record high.

BRUCE MCQUAIN: Support Our Wounded — Support Cooking With The Troops.

Knoxville, Tennessee. The Pizza Palace on Magnolia. This place should be familiar both to Knoxville expats and to fans of Guy Fieri.

HMM: Investigation Continues in Home Fire That Burned Siemens Charger, Chevy Volt. So is this a real problem, or just a Toyota hysteria episode redux?

FIVE WAYS WE RUINED THE OCCUPY WALL STREET GENERATION. Most of ‘em aren’t ruined, of course. They’re out working, or looking for jobs, or doing things other than squatting in tents somewhere. That’s how it was in the ’60s, too, actually, despite the media portrayals.

But here’s an excerpt: “We’ve extended the awkward teenage years into the mid to late 20s. Now, I would not be apologizing for this if it was just the result of social and economic factors outside our control. But the problem is that we made a hero of that person. Think Kelso in That ’70s Show, or Joey from Friends. My generation aspired to be that guy, the kid in a grownup body with simple, childish appetites and aspirations. I was that guy for years — a dude can get very popular doing that. But let me tell you from experience, the longer you put off adulthood, the harder the transition is.”

UPDATE: Reader Troy Hinrichs emails:

I agree wholeheartedly that this generation isn’t ruined. I’m a professor at a small liberal arts university and every time I make a snide remark about OWS in class — which is quite often — I get a lot of nodding heads and laughs (when the comments are funny). This generation is willing to work hard often and values authenticity even if they don’t always know what that means.

I also agree with Dr. VDH that this group is worried — and rightly so — about debt and the long term cost. They’re also very skeptical of institutions. I’ve been a professor for 13 years now and I’ve never heard so many students utter the word “retirement” in relation to their own futures — and not in a good way. The Penn State issue (along with any NCAA problems of decidedly lesser evil) also highlights the larger problem with institutions of higher education — insulation and isolation from normal people — including most of the students who attend college.

Indeed.

MICKEY KAUS: Occupy Wall Street to Mainstream Media: Dynamics Of Closed Loop Systems. “Left types at Occupy Wall Street protest income inequality. Left types in the MSM turn out lots of articles on income inequality. Politico notices there are lots of articles on income inequality and concludes that ‘Occupy Wall Street is winning.’ Huh?”

Related: Things you learn by watching the news.

AT AMAZON: Today only, up to 65% off on men’s dress pants.

IF YOU MISSED IT EARLIER, OR DON’T SUBSCRIBE TO PJTV, here’s my Michael Barone interview on YouTube.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Occupy Wall Street and Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Wall Street is insidious in ways that transcend the 401(k) plans of the middle classes. It is deeply embedded within the Washington–New York nexus, the Ivy League, and both the liberal and conservative political apparat. So the protesters never had clear targets, inasmuch as Wall Street money in 2008 went heavily for Obama, an expert in garnering Goldman Sachs and BP cash. Otherwise, its peripheral messages were incoherent or anarchic, and turned off rather than won over most Americans.

Occupy Wall Street did, however, raise one important issue: that of higher education and its role in increasing tuition and little commensurate education. So much of the angst in video clips and op-eds was voiced by a youthful upper middle class who went to the university, majored either in social science or liberal arts, piled up debt, faced almost no employment choices commensurate with their class and their educational brand — and thus were furious at the more profit-minded members of a like class for abandoning them.

Revolutionary movements throughout history are so often sparked by the anger, envy, and disappointments of an upper-middle cohort, highly educated, but ill-suited for material success in the existing traditional landscape.

Read the whole thing. Plus, from Ace, some related thoughts.

#OCCUPY CORZINE.

JAY COST: Can Obama Win By Going Negative?

ABC NEWS: White House Emails Show Foreboding About Solyndra, Harsh Criticism of Steven Chu. “Carol’s four-page proposal to restructure the Energy Department included the blunt recommendation that Chu be fired, and that his leadership team also be replaced, calling it time for ‘serious changes, even if they are uncomfortable to make.’ . . . Carol also predicted the political fallout that would result from what he saw as inevitable failures of the Energy Department’s now-embattled loan guarantee program. He made the dire predictions when advising that Obama replace Chu with someone who was not ‘too associated … with [the] Silicon Valley business elite.’”

#OCCUPYFAIL: OF THE 1%, BY THE 1%, AND FOR THE 1%: Harvard Keeps Occupy Harvard Harvard-Only.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Meet The Growing Number Of Americans Who Want To Move Abroad. “The share of Americans planning to relocate increased to 2.5 percent from 0.8 percent in 2009. If this number describes the entire population, that means around 6 million Americans are planning on leaving the country.”

BLU-RAY DEAL OF THE WEEK: Braveheart / Gladiator 2-Pack on Blu-Ray for $20.99.

#OCCUPYFAIL: The Occupy Movement’s Penchant for Inflicting Collateral Damage Isn’t Winning it Any Friends.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Generation Jobless: What Hedge Funds Can Teach College Students.

Historically, investors have assumed 25% to 30% of student loans bundled into their bonds will default. But today they are baking in between 30% and 40% default rates among the current crop of graduates, said Chris Haid, a director in asset backed trading at Barclays Capital. Even those assumptions are a best guess and defaults could ultimately go higher if unemployment rises, Mr. Haid said.

This analysis translates into some surprising insights for students and policy makers. For example, in the current economy, it may make more sense to enter a technical college than to go to law school. . . . Failure to graduate is the single most important predictor of whether a student will default on loans, which stands to reason since the unemployment rate is 8% for Americans between the ages of 20 and 24 with four-year college degrees, compared to 21% for those without.

Just as important is finishing on time. Investors in bonds backed by student loans hate to see perpetual academics in their portfolio, chronically changing majors or stopping and starting school, adding years of tuition to their debt load.

“When you see a guy in a loan made in 2005 that is still in school, you throw that away,” said investor Rubin Bahar, of Eagle Asset Management.

In terms of picking a school, technical colleges may be less prestigious, but their low cost relative to the higher wages they deliver makes them attractive, according to Mr. Ades.

It’s an investment. You need to think carefully about whether it will increase your earnings enough to service the debt and still leave you ahead — especially after adjusting for risk, including the risk that you won’t graduate, or won’t do as well as you hope.

MIKE MOLLENHOUR HAS DROPPED THE PRICE OF HIS LATEST NOVEL on Kindle.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Seattle cost hits $529,000. “The city’s price tag to monitor the entrenched Occupy Seattle protest ballooned to $529,609 this week, which includes last week’s pepper-spraying and arrests of protesters in Capitol Hill. Much of that cost was for police overtime, but includes money for parks and facilities work related to the populist movement.”

RIGHTHAVEN UPDATE: Judge scolds Righthaven lawyer, adds another $32,000 judgment. Good. Add a few more zeroes.