College, an institution that, like one of those "deluxe" raffle tickets, extracts a hefty fee in exchange for a chance of entry into a higher social class, is very expensive these days. Why? According to one new analysis, it's because of your sniveling need for "nice" dorms and food.

The most recent Matt Taibbi story about financial chicanery and corruption concerns the ratings agencies, who happily doled out AAA ratings to packages of shit right up until the whole economy collapsed in 2008. Just how duplicitous were these allegedly impartial pillars of finance?

"If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour — three times what it is now."

Even the lucky people who have cash to invest are often cynical about the stock market. "The game is rigged. Smart money vs. dumb money. Insiders win. Efficient markets. You can't beat the pros. Why try?" Etc. Wrong! To be a successful investor, you only need to know one thing.

Yesterday, the front page of the New York Times brought joyous news: "Even Pessimists Feel Optimistic About the American Economy." Indeed, some of our most prominent economic pundits are telling us that everything is different now. BEWARE.

While the *total* wealth of Americans has recovered from the hit of the recession, those gains are, of course, not evenly distributed. The rich are doing great. Regular Joes, however, are not nearly back to where they started. And young people are truly fucked.

There is currently a minor uproar over the revelation that various non-governmental groups sell early access— two seconds early—to their market-moving news releases to paying customers, who can then trade on that information before everyone else. This points to a larger problem: the entire institution of "high frequency trading" has no public benefit, and tons of risk.

When the whole global economy teetered on the edge of failure a few years ago— remember that?— one of the reasons was that insurers had insured lots of things that they could not, in fact, afford to pay for, when the bill came due. Now, they're marching down that path once again.

Big banks have had a rough several years. They, you know, participated wholeheartedly in the near-vaporization of the global economy. They have to make up those losses somehow. Fees are the answer to everything! Do you know how much your bank is charging you, for nothing?

Nike, Microsoft, Dell, and plenty of other Fortune 500 companies are just as enthusiastic about using offshore tax havens as Apple is.

Most of the new jobs in America pay below-average wages.

The must-read capitalist profile of the week is BloombergBusinessweek's look at Costco and its CEO, Craig Jelinek. Costco is the second-largest retailer in America, after Wal-Mart. Their business practices could hardly be more different.

Besides forcing young college graduates into a decades-long penurious existence as veritable indentured servants to institutions of higher learning, there's another downside to our nation's $1 trillion student debt: it's stopping young people from starting business. Businesses! The lifeblood of Republicanism!

Almost five years after the near-total collapse of the global economy, the stock market has once again reached new highs. The rich are, without a doubt, getting richer. So have we actually recovered from the Great Recession? No, not at all.

It now costs $92 to get into Disneyland, for god's sake.

I despise when people say "Shocker" in front of a statement of fact, as a snide reminder of their own urbane ennui. If something is that unsurprising, why bother saying it all, you know? With that in mind, SHOCKER: the U.S. tax code is designed to help the wealthy.

Newsweek is for sale. Again! And what great timing: the CEO promises that Newsweek "will break-even in Q4 of this year." What reason could you possibly find not to buy?

It used to be that only the very rich had the opportunity to lose money by investing in hedge funds. Now, you can too!

Those who enjoy slow-motion disasters have spent years watching the travails of the gallant United States Postal Service, which is kind of like FedEx if it was run by the Three Stooges. Just how existentially challenged is our nation's mail service?

Detroit, America's most spectacular postindustrial disaster zone, is broke. Severely broke. Negative-11-digit debt broke. So broke it can't even afford to run its courts. Detroit needs some cash. If only it had some valuable stuff to sell....