Just what the world needs, more B'desh army units serving the UN ...
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday announced that her government would impart training to Bangladeshi peacekeepers with modern arms and ammunition to help them cope with the challenges of UN peacekeeping operations.
We have already taken measures including providing modern training to the members of armed and police forces to send more troops to UN peacekeeping missions as our country's participation in peace mission largely depends on our ability to send troops,' she said.
Our all-out efforts would continue so that all the Bangladeshi peacekeepers could respond to the call of UN with their proven dedication, and serve peace, humanity and democracy, across the world,' Hasina said.
Bangladesh is currently the second largest troops contributing country to the UN peacekeeping missions.
Wonder where the mighty Uruguayans are ...
The prime minister said the peacekeeping has raised the country's image abroad and also produced dividends such as foreign exchange earnings contributing to the national economy.
The cash is especially useful in a country with a sterling reputation for handling it ...
She mentioned that she had already raised the demand for proportionate representation in the UN peacekeeping missions. A Bangladeshi peacekeeper with the rank of major general has been appointed force commander of a multi-national force in the peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast, she said referring to diplomatic efforts.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/30/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
[Iran Press TV Latest] The massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is spreading out as the oil is still gushing out from the BP's damaged well 40 days after the explosion.
The so-called "top kill" method, which British Petroleum has employed since Wednesday, has proven to be a failure with the company's top executive Tony Hayward saying the chances to plug the leak are only 60 to 70 percent.
In the "top kill" method, heavy fluids and other material are pumped into the well shaft to stop the oil flow.
"The top kill operation continues and will carry on throughout the day today. We're not putting any time constraints on the operation - it will progress as operations teams deem appropriate through the day today and longer if necessary," company spokesman Tom Mueller said in an email on Saturday, refraining from setting a date for the completion of the operation, reported Reuters.
BP on Friday said that it needed until Sunday to say whether the top kill procedure is conclusive.
Officials say At least 6 million gallons of crude have entered the sea since the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers.
A US probe has put the leak at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. But some experts believe the damaged well is gushing at least 70,000 barrels of oil a day. BP has admitted that the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is an "environmental catastrophe."
The US media have accused BP of denying access to photographers and trying to block information about the biggest oil spill in US history.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/30/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
BP has admitted 'Top Kill' has failed. BP engineers will try once again to solve the problem with a containment cap and that it could take four to seven days for the device to be in place. BP has started work on two relief wells, but officials have said that they will not be completed until August. If the new cap is not successful, the company has said it will look into attaching another blowout preventer to the one that already exists at the wellhead and has not functioned.
But officials emphasized that the real solution to the spill was the relief well. They said one of the relief wells was currently proceeding ahead of schedule, but was still at least a month away.
#3
The latest failure will undoubtedly put more pressure both politically and from the public on the Obama administration to take some sort of action, perhaps taking control of the repair effort completely from BP.
Ya better wait until you're sure it's fixed, before you try to take "control".
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/30/2010 10:38 Comments ||
Top||
#4
OK, so Obama is not addressing issues related to the the Gulf oil spill, at least his golf score is improving.
#5
50,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil is leaking into the ocean each day. So far that equals 10 Valdez tanker spills. What was BP doing running the fire fighting operations that sunk the rig, breaking off the pipe at the ocean floor. When your house is on fire, you do not run out and tell the fire department how to fight the fire. It may be your house but fire fighting is not your expertise. BP also ignored a warning from Transocean crews hours before the explosion. And now top kill failed. Obama's is not the man to lead in this especially after saying BP's problem and recently saying he is now in charge and then leaving on vacation???
Put 5,000 feet of pipe from the floor to the surface NOW to get control of this oil. There are pipe yards all over Texas and Louisana that they can get that pipe from. There are people all over Texas, Louisana and Alaska that can put that pipe line together with anchoring flanges, valves and manifolds and there are tons of off shore people who can put it in place in a few days. THe pipe and manifold allows the oil to be routed to barges keeping pressure at the base of the pipe low while it is being sealed to the ocean floor.
When the pipe flange on the floor is sealed, close a valve in the pipe just above the ocean floor and remove the rest of the pipe from the valve to the ocean surface leaving a stub on the ocean floor. The well is sealed. This is not rocket science, people.
#6
PTDH, I wish it was that easy. A variant on what you suggest is a considered option. It requires cutting the old riser off just above the BOP, but that would have to be a clean cut leaving a round (not oval or crimped) cross section and enough of a stub looking up to get a seal onto. Further complication is no one knows how much the kinked riser is restricting the flow - once it is cut, whatever restriction that was providing will be gone until the intended new pipe is mated onto the stub - will it be triple whatever the current (unknown) flow is? And what if the high risk attempt to mate the new pipe on fails? Now you have triple the volume coming out, and no way to slow it down.
As I understand it, they plan to try to cut the riser and pull it out of the way, and set a new 'cap' - think upside-down funnel - over it, like the first thing that clogged with clathrates, but with an anti-freeze injection line and a closer fit to allow less water into the thing. Perhaps 90% of the flow could then be directed into surface tankers. That leaves perhaps 10% loose - and it's 10% of a new, larger (unknown) volume. Given the risk of total failure and the unknown volumes and capture efficiency, this was not the preferred option.
Keep in mind that the best fix all along has been a relief well, and that one has been drilling (along with a 'spare') since as soon as they could move a rig into the area. That takes time to drill (60 days maybe). You can't just sit and watch, so you keep trying other stuff that might work - but you do need to avoid making it even worse. And as bad as it is, it can become a lot worse.
#7
Damn 10 million barrels a day and Bushitler and the Chaney gang ar..... umm.... I'll get back to 'ye.
But it's bad.... real...... damn bad. Worser that Operation Drumbeat. There's little chance any of us on the coast will get out alive. I will buy you out cheaply.
I failed to mention above you go down with large diameter pipe large enough to encompass the flow. You do not mate with existing hardware in the ocean floor. You do not use drill casing. Too complicated. Keep it simple.
You seal the 36" to 48" large diameter pipe currently used to carry oil in Alaska and water to many municipalities to the newly poured cement around the leaks. Cement may need to be leveled off. Your solution and BP's solution requires all cement just poured to be busted out. Too time consuming. A relief well may not work as planned either. Methane gas pressure may be too great for one relief well to handle. By then the entire eco-system along the southern US coast will be toast. Entire fishing industries and related enterprises will be belly up.
#9
Even 48" pipe won't clear the BOP, so you'd have to try to cut/blast that free of the existing drive pipe - further increasing the flow rate while you clear the site and try to set and drive the new pipe around the old, all the while trying not to sink your drill ship due to decreased water density with all that gas coming at you. Then, I don't know that you could run big pipe to the surface - tensile strength of the string? draw works strength? And if you don't, it could plug up with clathrate like the cap did. Then you still have to work inside the new pipe to grab the old drill pipe stub and try to fish some of that out of the way - or sting into it. Only if all that works can you pump kill mud down deep enough to counterbalance the pressure and allow you to pump cement on top of it. Can't just pump cement from the surface as the flowing oil & gas will just blow it back in your face like it did with the top kill effort.
It's not that the relief well can't handle the methane pressure - with appropriate mud weight in the hole, and enough in the tanks to fill the old well from the bottom up, it can. The risks are that you will not hit the first well on the first (or second) try, or that the relief well will encounter drilling problems of its own - lost circulation zone going into or out of the salt layer, getting stuck, hitting an unknown gas zone and taking a kick and having to shut new BOP to get control, etc. - so they are drilling a second relief well even before the first encounters problems. And I think considering a third, if a ship is available.
And all these actions require government approval - I don't see the government allowing BP to blast off the BOP and increase the flow a lot (hopefully temporarily, but.....) until other options have failed. For that matter, it's possible that blasting off the BOP would unchoke the well so far and fast that the rock formation would collapse and bridge over (kind of what they were hoping the junk shots would do, but with rock instead of golf balls and shredded tires). Then again, it might not bridge over - could it flow 150,000 BOPD? Don't know. And for how long? Don't know.
I'm not a drilling enginer, but I have dealt with them enough, including on problems not unlike this, to know there are not simple, sure answers - at any price.
Yep, fishing industry and seaside recreation industry may disappear from the Gulf - or even the Atlantic coast - for years. Might even do that if the spill stopped today. Could confiscate and redistribute the assets of every oil company and still not make people 'whole' - but maybe spreading the pain is a less unfair path.
#11
We don't really know if Ixtoc was as bad as this - or how much worse this will get.
I don't know how badly Ixtoc damaged the environment or what kind of environment - this one is hitting the marshes, which are the nurseries for most seafood, and we don't know how badly they will be damaged or how quickly they will recover. (Sandy beaches, where the big recreational money is, are less damagable and more readily cleaned.)
I drove along the LA-MS coast the other day - saw boom across every visible tidal channel, but no oil - yet. Lots of oil not far offshore working back and forth through my field with the tides & weather.
Ixtoc 1 is the second largest oil spill in history, eclipsed only by the intentional oil spill by Saddam Hussein's army as it retreated from Kuwait in 1991. Estimate of Ixtoc 1 volume is 150M gallons of oil. Iraqi deliberate oil spill: 400M gallons. Current, and obviously rough, estimates of Deepwater Horizon oil spill: 20M gallons of oil. Exxon Valdez: 10M gallons.
I think it's important not to lose perspective in this sort of thing because as you can see, those who have lost perspective are psyching themselves up to playing the lottery and trying solutions that'll make the spill as bad as they say it is now.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/30/2010 16:25 Comments ||
Top||
#15
If Long John Silvers closes because of this, I am definitely impacted.
Posted by: Boss Joluth7350 ||
05/30/2010 16:47 Comments ||
Top||
#16
FAILED = FAILING? the TEST FOR "GLOBALISM/OWG-NWO" in 2010.
COMET APOPHIS + Earth-Guam visible Explosions of the Moon, ala 2030???
Heck, its only 2010 + both US Congress-, Global-Critters = Pols have indic that RELIABLE SPACE DEFENCE WILL BE [seriously] PROBLEMATIC IN LT THANX TO THE US-GLOBAL RECESSION/DEPRESSION [SSSSHHHHHH + eveything in between???
(Germany is suspending its 3 billion euro (2.6 billion pounds) purchase of EADS's (EAD.PA) Tiger attack helicopter due to technical problems, potentially delaying delivery to its forces in Afghanistan until end-2011. An internal ministry report obtained by Reuters on Tuesday said the step was being taken because of serious problems with the wiring of the helicopter built by EADS unit Eurocopter.
"Until the faults have been effectively and systematically rectified, the defence ministry plans to suspend the purchase of the ... helicopters," the report said.
The problems, which also cropped up with Tigers which had only had a few hours flying time, meant delivery of the first deployable helicopters would be delayed by at least seven months until November 2011, according to the report.
None of the 11 Tiger helicopters delivered so far has been suitable for operational use or training, the report added. The Franco-German attack helicopter first flew in 2003 but its entry into service has been delayed by technical problems.
France and Germany ordered 80 Tigers each but they are being built in different versions to suit their operational needs. Germany's order for the 80 Tiger helicopters was worth around 3 billion euros, according to previous estimates.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/30/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
Negotiations on a future Palestinian state might be stuck in neutral. But Jihad al-Wazir, the closest thing to a Palestinian Federal Reserve board chairman, is planning one key aspect of statehood: what the money will be.
D'you suppose that cabal of spoilt North Korean offspring will start forging that one, too?
Since the creation of Israel in 1948, Palestinians have mainly used the Israeli shekel for commerce. Now they're quietly considering reissuing the defunct Palestine pound, an example of which is displayed in a museum-like Lucite case outside Wazir's office, alongside coins from the time of Alexander the Great.
Quiet talk in the West Bank of a new Palestinian currency comes amid a push by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to ensure the Palestinians can function independently of Israel if they gain sovereignty through peace talks or issue a unilateral declaration in two years if negotiations fail. Fayyad has been working to reform government institutions, professionalize the police force and establish mundane bodies such as a statistics bureau.
Good. If they do get statehood, they'll need to be ready.
Otherwise statehood will quickly revert to non-statehood.
Wazir, a well-regarded economist who Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, counts as a friend, has at the same time been working on creating Palestinian economic independence. A central banker without a bank, he can't employ the traditional monetary policy tools of changing interest rates or issuing Treasury bills. Instead, Wazir has busied himself since 2008 with strengthening private bank supervision, combating money laundering and setting up mechanisms to spot bounced checks. Establishing a currency -- one of the surest signs of sovereignty -- is the next logical step.
"All options are open, as far as we're concerned -- issuing our own currency is one," Wazir said in an interview, adding that the Palestinians are exploring linking the future currency to the dollar or the euro -- or perhaps adopting one of them instead of the shekel. Even with that caveat, all signs show the Palestinians are at least getting ready to issue their own dough. Bulldozers recently broke ground on a new Palestine Central Bank building that will include specialized vaults.
In the meantime, a committee quietly mulls what images to put on a new Palestine pound. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is a possibility, Wazir acknowledged, along with scientists, poets and artists. "We're bringing something back to life,'' he said. "Hopefully, the politics will catch up.''
The Ebola virus first emerged in 1976, striking fear with the uncontrollable bleeding it causes and mortality rates up to 90 percent. Ever since then, scientists have been struggling to find a way to treat the infection or protect against it.
There has been progress, but nothing quite like the report in the May 28 issue of the scientific journal The Lancet.
No offense, but I'll believe it when the paper has been accepted for publication in a respected medical journal that isn't The Lancet. They've developed a bit of a reputation for accepting papers based on agenda-driven bad science -- remember the claims about deaths in Iraq caused by the 2003 invasion, or the claims about childhood vaccines causing autism?
A team led by Thomas Geisbert of Boston University has used an experimental drug to protect monkeys from death after injecting them with massive doses of the most lethal strain of Ebola.
"We were stunned," Geisbert says. "I've been working with this virus for my whole career -- 23 or 24 years -- and we've had some mild successes where maybe we could go up to 50 percent protection," he said. "But I was really shocked that we got complete protection."
Virologist Heinz Feldmann of the National Institute on Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who often collaborates with Geisbert but was not involved in this work, called the results "a milestone" -- and not just for treatment of Ebola.
"I think this will most likely also work for other related viral hemorrhagic fevers," Feldmann said, such as Marburg, Lassa and Crimean-Congo fever. All are deadly to one degree or another and cause outbreaks in Africa and elsewhere.
We need diseases to keep the population down. There are too many people in the world. Fish stocks are collapsing. Pollution is rising. Cheap oil is running out.
Look what happened at Easter Island, it is a microcosm of planet earth.
Collapse from overpopulation comes swiftly not slowly. It happens in the space of a couple of generations when people have too many kids and those kids have too many kids.
Culturally those people that believe they have the right to have 9 and 10 kids are strangling the planet. Then the developed world has to stump up the aid money to feed them!
noooo leave the viruses alone they are there for a reason.
This comes to us via occasional regular Muck4Doo, who posted it in the O Club last night. Once you're past the standard diatribe at the start it turns into a fairly interesting discussion of spill containment using booms. NSFW language, unless you're in the fucking oilfield and have to use the fucking rope.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain ||
05/30/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The fucking problem is this awesome flow rate that happens to be a mile buck 3 offr shore in 3 different OCEAN CURRENTS and no fucking boom handles what happens in under water currents- It is far bigger than your fucking boom may handle.
If we could have rigs closer to fucking shore, the fucking boom would work. So glad your FUCKING EPA had so many fucking booms on hand at the fucking time of the spill, and they regulated us so far off the coast.
After all, the Fucking EPA is paid billions. Anyfucking way... Had Anyone in the Fucking EPA been worth anything, they would actually have people that DO things like this Fucking boom that is worthless out there in the middle of the currents - that change and warm and - wait! I thought you elected fucking someone who can control currents and like booms and EPA's and stuff.
Actually, the Fucking EPA was supposed to maintain a Fucking boom but it magically disappeared with every FUCKING GOVERNMENT SERVICE we had.
Nice try, but this is a fucking boom over your knowledge base.
If you prefer to be profound, profanity is not an objective lesson in education.
#2
And BP, I want that live shot to be live all the time -no 4 minutes of video - It's like the weather to me. You hired Halliburton to do the cement work and you had oversight. I expect what you put US through to be live, honest and streaming.
#3
Newc: I agree with you that the EPA should have had booms on hand.
I posted that video for one main thing: to note that the booming close to shore is being done improperly. Any of: BP, the Coast Guard, the EPA, or the State Government should realize there's a right way to do booming, and a wrong way.
I tried to sleep tonight. I couldn't. I kept coming back to the idea, "what if they're screwing up the cleanup on purpose, to generate more sentiment to transferring the remainder of what's left of the oil business here to the Middle East?" And I can't imagine a damn thing that's on the news that's inconsistent with that theory.
Add in all the stuff I've heard over the years DECADES about BP's primary shareholders being some of the governments of those countries, and it's ominious.
Our country is in the hands of the passive-aggressive chickenshits who are willing to get angry but not willing to actually be competent.
#5
Where is the worthless fucking community oganizer in cheif. Why isn't he down there organizing communities? That is supposed to be his one credential isn't it?
Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.
Citibank gave Cortney Munna $40,000 in loans, though she had already amassed debt well into the five figures. It was like the "no doc" loans that home buyers used to get in over their heads.
Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.
This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up. Note the NYT's angle: it isn't their fault.
Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. Duh. Everyone knows that.
I didn't know that. I'm not good at financial things.
It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners.
Indeed.
For starters, it's a shared failure of parenting and loan underwriting.
But perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process. And I would argue that they had an obligation to counsel students like Ms. Munna, who got in too far over their heads. With liberals, it's never anyone's fault. Note that they don't mention which subject her degree was in until the very end of the article.
No one forces borrowers to take out these loans, and Ms. Munna and her mother, Cathryn, have spent the years since her graduation trying to understand where they went wrong. Maybe it was women's studies? Strange the article makes no mention of this.
How could her mother have let her run up that debt, and why didn't she try to make her daughter transfer to, say, the best school in the much cheaper state university system in New York? "All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her," Cathryn said. "All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naivete on my part." Good job? What kind of good job would that be? With a women's studies degree from NYU? This is just bourgeois pretentiousness, "getting in to the best school". Why isn't the NYT coming down like a hammer on it?
But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a "no doc" or at least a "low doc" subprime mortgage loan. What was she thinking, borrowing money from a well-known loan shark? For a degree in which the only jobs are in academia?
The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up against, because they see their families' financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn't N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she'd passed, say, $60,000 in total debt?
"Had somebody called me and said, 'Do you have a clue where this is all headed?', it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed," said Cathryn Munna. BS, you would have slapped them with a lawsuit if they had dared question your career choices.
That's not a role that the university wants to take on, though. "I think that would be completely inappropriate," said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. "Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I'm not sure that's always the best decision, but it's one that they really have to make themselves." Personal responsibility, surprise surprise.
Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma. Then why the hell did she get one in the first place!
She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. There, see? You need a degree in wimmins studies to work for a photographer. Ev'ryone knows that ...
Forty-four thousand dollars a year seems pretty good for a single woman with a degree in women's studies. Could it be that she's in sales, and the verbal facility developed in her chosen field transferred to other subjects?
It's the highest salary she's earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies.
Well golly, if there's interdisciplinary and religion involved, that changes things considerably! Or not, as the case may be.
After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren't being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over.
She may finally be earning enough to barely scrape by while still making the payments for the first time since she graduated, at least until interest rates rise and the payments on her loans with variable rates spiral up. And while her job requires her to work nights and weekends sometimes, she probably should find a flexible second job to try to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month.
Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back," she said. "It feels wrong to me." Would happily give back? I rather doubt you would have accepted a position at State U rather than the prestigious NYU. You wanted the high-dollar degree in a useless discipline, and you got it. Now you say you want a do-over? Bull. Note how the NYT does not mention once the lack of jobs for women's studies graduates. It's all Citibank's fault, the university's fault, anyone's fault but hers. A man with a useless college degree can always drive a cab. What does a woman with a useless college degree do? Ask Cortney ...
Cortney has persuaded someone she's worth a good deal more than minimum wage. Clearly she got something beyond ego gratification out of those four years away from home. And she's gotten an education beyond price in the years since. Someday, when she's mostly paid down the cost of that education, she might even contemplate marriage.
If I were sexist I'd suggest she marry a rich man ...
#1
Boy...there's a surprise. Someone with a useful degree like women's studies (or black studies, hispanic studies, you fill-in-the-blank studies, etc.) with a $150k price tag.
I figure potential employers figure she is just too stupid to hire if she spent $150k for a degree that any toad that can read single syllable words and memorize anti-white male euphemisms could get.
#2
What does a woman with a useless college degree do?
Be a waitress, which, BTW, would be a possible flexible second job if she would stop sitting around whining about how everyone but her is responsible for her predicament. I'm sure there would be a few vacancies in San Francisco in that career choice. It might even help out a little with the food bill from time to time.
Of course, she might think that is beneath her as a NYU grad with a "prestigious" degree. It's not as much fun as going to night school (how the hell is she paying for that, anyway? More loans?), but at least she'd be making headway on that massive debt.
#5
Women's studies is one of the many victories won by radical leftists in academia. Feminists demanded their own departments, degrees, department heads, etc., and got them. They invented a discipline out of whole cloth. It's been fantastically successful at cranking out thousands of ideologically conditioned radical liberals. Laugh at your peril.
#8
Dunno how US bankruptcy law works. I was stupid enough to do an Arts degree in Australia, similarly useless. But i got a job and not too much debt as we pay through a government scheme that only makes you pay it back when you earn over a certain amount, and only as a percentage of your taxes.
It's only indexed to inflation so I don't really care if i never pay it back. I can still borrow for a house etc.
If I were Cortney I would immediately declare bankruptcy. I read there that it's easier to walk away from housing debt than student loans, but why?
I'm sure there is a way around it. Take anyway around it you can. $100k debt you cannot recover from. You need that debt to buy a house and buy income-producing assets.
Get rid of that liability straight up.
And while you are bankrupt I would take whatever job you can get and probably do some black money work on the side.
If I were you, Cortney, and if bankruptcy is not an option, I would go out and buy SuperFreakonomics, and copy the high-class prostitute. You will pay off your loan in a year then set yourself up for life in 3 if you play your cards right.
You might have read about prostitution in women's studies somewhere...
#9
If I were Cortney I would immediately declare bankruptcy
Anon1, unfortunately for Cortney, in the US federal and private student loans cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy.
A better outcome for her would be to wrangle her way into a public sector job. With Wymins studies its probably all she is suited for and according to a 2009 CATO Institute study the average federal civilian salary with benefits totals $119,982 compared to $59,909 for the average private sector worker. So she should be able to pay it back in no time at all.
#10
It sez right in the article, and I thought this was well-known, student loans cannot be escaped by bankruptcy. It's right up there with an emergency plane ticket home from your friendly (hahaha) US embassy abroad. That is, if you can actually meet a US State Department employee at an embassy. I've never seen one and they go to great lengths to avoid US citizens...they'll put the citizen services unit in another building miles away.
#13
Many modern state universities and colleges were founded over a 100 years ago as basically A&M, agricultural and mechanical. These were practical applications that society could employ thus justifying their cost and expense. Many of them morphed with the addition of things like the physical sciences and allied mathematics about the time that technology started really impacting everyday life. People could identify the link between what they were getting with advanced education in more esoteric fields of endeavor. Then came the big money high created by the post-WWII GI Bill. Once graced with such a massive governmental fiscal shot, the institutions wanted more money, more resources. Thus began the long march through universities and colleges to become paper mills in which they certified competency in any particular venue to the glee of incompetent and inefficient personnel departments nationwide. From this fountain thus sprang all sorts of degrees in absolutely useless degrees in practical application and employment.
Long time past that state owned and operated institutions be slimmed down back to A&Ms, but with the terms Application & Medical as a more contemporary context. If the soul needs advanced education opportunities beyond that, there are private colleges to address the need if there is market.
#15
@#2: Of course, she might think that is beneath her as a NYU grad with a "prestigious" degree.
Turns out that's an issue in Europe: one of the reasons unemployment is as high as it is in college grads there is that the grads won't take a job that is 'beneath' their education. If Courtney were German she wouldn't have that job with the photographer. She would, instead, go get a useless graduate degree and become even more unemployable, and the German government would pay for it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/30/2010 9:15 Comments ||
Top||
#16
@#3: Poor thing, she just needs to hold on until the Barry O bailout is introduced.
Yep, the Federales just took over the whole student loan system -- same bill as the takeover of health care, tossed in for free by Queen Pelosi. If Courtney had waited she would have been able to pay the loans over 20 years, up to a certain percentage of her miserable income, and have the rest forgiven. Or if she took a government or NGO job, 10 years.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/30/2010 9:18 Comments ||
Top||
#17
Either she's not working full time or 40% of her pay is going to taxes and other deductions.
She's an educated person and should have learned how to handle this situation efficiently. Sue the photographer for harassment and pay off the loans.
#21
Women's Studies is supposed to be about "empowering" women, if you bother to read the propaganda. A woman wastes 4 years and much money on this degree to end up unemployable and in debt. Now she must either rely on Daddy or a husband for support. How exactly does this "empower" her? If one was truely interested in "empowering" women, you'd get them to take something useful, like engineering. She could then get a well paying job and be completetly self-supporting.
#23
Whenever I see a person with ethnic/women/peace studies I think: "Another wasted four years" I blame the parents and whomever guided towards that degree. Somebody should have told here along the way: "you will never get a decent job with this degree" She should have minored in business then she could have gone into personnel or human resources.
#26
From this fountain thus sprang all sorts of degrees in absolutely useless degrees in practical application and employment.
To be fair this pretty well describes the pre-A&M universities that persisted in the west for centuries. Typically one studied the Western Canon and little if anything else, with the teaching of particular trade skills seen as beneath the dignity of the university. See e.g., the Harvard faculty's long resistance to the founding of their law school for one well-known example.
Cortney is intended consequence of the modern university and its governmental sugar daddies. Just as the student loan market began to react to the proliferation of unmarketable degrees (see e.g., State Street's "indentured servant" (my term) program and other programs that were beginning to base lending decisions on the discipline being studied) Congress rescued the purveyors of unmarketable degrees by placing student loans beyond the reach of bankruptcy courts. Thus with no incentive to evaluate loan applicants or the marketability of the degrees they seek, and (allegedly) no prospect of losses loans, providers were incentivized to lend to everyone and thus guaranteed an explosion of worthless courses of study and unmarketable degrees.
And now that we have a generation of Corneys who have discovered the worthless nature of the degrees they have been granted and who are unable and unwilling to bear the cost of same, it has become necessary for the government to nationalize the student loan program in order to continue keep the diploma mills rolling. The alternative would see the market kill unmarketable degrees as lenders refused to subsidize them.
I don't agree with your points. Actually unemployment isn't that high for grads, and most of them will take most available jobs, often unpaid internships, to foster their career. Those who end up as taxi drivers exist, too (I drove taxis when studying to finance my life, education was free).
"If Courtney were German she wouldn't have that job with the photographer. She would, instead, go get a useless graduate degree and become even more unemployable, and the German government would pay for it."
No degree is "useless", but of course some degrees will secure you well paid jobs while others are less likely to do so.
Yet people who study, let's say Medieval Philology, usually don't have well-paid jobs in mind. In our society we do need a few (not many) experts in Medieval Philology, and as usual, the most dedicated can actually make a career (usually academic) out of it.
The others? Well, we also have too many bad lawyers, too.
But nobody in Germany starts a career with a six-figure debt.
In Cortney's case there seems to have been a blind faith that the best college will secure her a well-paid career. Well, how likely is that with "Women's studies"?
NYU could have told that girl that maybe she wasn't part of the chosen few who'd make an academic career. Suppose they didn't care as long as the checks cleared.
And banks who hand out 100000 dollars to students should also be forced to assume at least part of the risk.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/30/2010 19:24 Comments ||
Top||
#28
No degree is "useless"
WRONG! Perhaps this is true in Europe but not in the US. A degree in (fill in the blank) Studies is generally useless unless it leads to an otherwise useful professional degree in law, medicine or business. Wymens studies is a useless degree that will may lead to the acquisition of a useless law degree.
"useful professional degree in law, medicine or business."
I think our society needs not only lawyers, doctors and business people.
If education needs to be paid for, I'd recommend loans from the state, to be paid back according to your financial possibilities interest-free.
It's in the interest of every country to have well-educated citizens (who will pay a lot of taxes when working in well-paid jobs). But we also need people who dedicate themselves to not so well paid jobs: teachers, professors, writers, artists, musicians.
Germany has introduced a (rather modest fee) for universities. Yet I think that - apart from the most respected colleges/universities in the U.S. (Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT etc) the education you get at a German university is as good as at an US institution.
The "investment" in our young is returned in taxes later on.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/30/2010 20:10 Comments ||
Top||
#32
Imagine an entire nation of just of lawyers doctors and bidness pros. That's a combustible combination. We need people whose writing is legible and understandable, so cross Doctors off the list, and legalese is Greek, cross out Lawyers. Ahem, which leaves Business folks, who also write contracts nobody, not even themselves, understand. Hmm. I prefer to keep some other careers for harmony and balance.
#33
The "investment" in our young is returned in taxes later on.
not for the *-Studies Depts - their progeny are forever on the dole, teaching, or unemployed longing for that "right spot"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/30/2010 20:21 Comments ||
Top||
#34
Well I don't know about the U.S. but at least in Germany the jobless rate among academics (including *-studies) is half than that of those who didn't study.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/30/2010 20:25 Comments ||
Top||
#35
2008 Graduate of University of Kentucky-School of Civil Engineering.
One full time semester of MBA school, to be completed later.
Total Cost- $74,000
Thankfully, I made a sensible choice in my line of study. I never blamed my lenders for the large cost, I do blame schools for letting expenses and tuition get totally out of hand. Tuition went up 15% every year for the five years I was in school, inflation was running about 3.25% at the time. There is a guilty party here, but it is not the lenders. Poor administration and unrealistic expectations are at least partly to blame.
#36
This is a textbook example of the Scarecrow Principle. "You don't need and education. All you need is a Diploma". Wizard of Oz. I wonder what kind of job she thought she'd get.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/30/2010 20:29 Comments ||
Top||
#37
As for unemployment, I recently read that the nationwide rate of unemployment for engineers is about 3%.
#38
I was a supervisor in a large corporation a number of years ago, and had a young guy who had an arts-type degree (I called it a basketweaving degree).
He moved furniture, delivered office supplies, and made minor repairs for me, because he had quickly discovered after graduation that he couldn't make a living at whatever his "art" was. (I inherited him with the job - I probably wouldn't have hired him, as he really resented having to do manual labor - and let everyone know it.)
But at least he had a degree.
He'd have made more income if he'd spent the money going to truck-driving school, or becoming an apprentice to a plumber, carpenter, or electrician. But apparently "having a degree" was more important.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/30/2010 20:32 Comments ||
Top||
#39
"If education needs to be paid for, I'd recommend loans from the state, to be paid back according to your financial possibilities interest-free."
EC, I've got an even better suggestion - do what we did and SAVE as much money as possible, from early childhood. Of course, that requires responsible parent(s).
My mother made it clear to us from an early age that (a) she couldn't afford to pay for college for either me or my brother, (b) we were going to college, and (c) any money we got as gifts would be going into accounts in the S&L for those college years. (We were allowed to keep change, so we really hoped to get 50 cents rather than a dollar for a birthday, etc. - yeah, it was a loooong time ago.)
Did we like it? Hell, no. My brother is more focused than I am, so he didn't mind it so much, but I hated it. I wanted the things the other girls had. Mama (thank goodness) didn't care. That money went in the S&L, and I eventually learned to shut up since that wasn't going to change.
So come time to go to college, I had most of the money to pay for it. I worked (and saved more) before I went to college, worked while I was in college, and only had to ask my family to help me with part of the cost of the last semester. My brother worked his way through college, too, to supplement his savings. Our family helped where they could, but it was mostly up to us.
So I graduated from college with a B.S. and NO DEBT (as did my brother).
It can be done, it people plan ahead and don't spend their lives up to their asses in debt, "living" on credit cards.
Or, of course, they can whine like Ms. Cortney here. And unfortunately for the rest of us, most do. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/30/2010 20:47 Comments ||
Top||
#40
It would take a heap of savings to do that today. I have read about schools offering prepaid educations at greatly reduced rates, I think it was Ohio State that would let you do that. But like I said, I borrowed sparingly, went to a public school and still had $74,000 in loans. The only thing that saved me was my choice of degrees. Well worth the money, in my particular case, but that's not a guarantee. The inflation adjusted cost of getting an education is getting out of control, how high will it be when my kids are ready to go to college? At the current rate of appreciation, who will be able to afford it in 20 years? Only the rich? Isn't that how it started out, will it have come full circle?
#41
"EC, I've got an even better suggestion - do what we did and SAVE as much money as possible, from early childhood. Of course, that requires responsible parent(s)."
Well I think it wouldn't be fair to students who didn't have responsible parents.
Ms. Cortney certainly deserve a good part of the blame, but still I think that banks and college are in for more than a penny for allowing the situation to escalate.
Who else in this world without any assets could rack up a debt of 100000 dollars in 4 years?
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/30/2010 21:01 Comments ||
Top||
#42
EC, Can anybody who wants to go to college in Germany, or do they still route people into vocational or academic tracks at 14?
#43
That depends on the respective "Land", but in any case you'd need the Abitur (high school degree) to enter university. In Bavaria the selection is made very early (some say too early) but its gymnasiums are better than in Northern Germany.
Actually the German Gymnasium would be more of a high school plus 2 college years (and is totally free).
Those who don't have the Abitur still have the possibility of the so-called Zweiter Bildungsweg. This is something of a free evening education which offers you the chance to obtain the Abitur as an adult. Then you can enter university like anyone else, even if you are 30, 40 or 95.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
05/30/2010 21:30 Comments ||
Top||
#44
Don't want debt to get a college degree -
The New Post-9/11 GI Bill offers a new set of benefits for servicemembers and veterans attending education and training programs taken at an accredited college or university. Post-9/11 benefit payments are tiered based on the amount creditable active-duty service you have since Sept. 10, 2001.
These new education benefits include the following:
* Up to 100% Tuition and Fee Coverage
* A Monthly Living (Housing) Stipend
* Up to $1000 a year for Books and Supplies
* A One Time Relocation Allowance
* The Option to Transfer Benefits to Family Members
It's amazing in all the discussions about costs that so many bury a means to pay. Wonder why? /rhet question
#45
"Citibank gave Cortney Munna $40,000 in loans, though she had already amassed debt well into the five figures."
Yeah, Citibank was an idiot to make the loans under those conditions, but Ms. Cortney was a BIGGER idiot to run up that kind of debt to begin with before even getting into college.
The smallest "5-figure" debt possible is $10,000 (and I'll bet it was more in her case).
I'm searching for my nano-violin. Really, I am. (But not too hard.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/30/2010 22:54 Comments ||
Top||
#46
European Conservative has a point that it's easy to miss, given that Ms. Munna and her ilk are so very obviously open to criticism. We need plumbers, electricians, teachers, engineers. But as a society we also need to know our history, be able to reason and write clearly etc. In other words, in addition to job training we need education.
Easy to overlook that, given the way in which the humanities and even sciences have been politicized and gutted in the last few decades. But true nonetheless. That was the rationale for free public schooling when a high school education was rare: that in a democracy where all adult citizens can vote, they had better know something about the country, the world and history before doing so.
Full disclosure: I took my Bachelor's degree from an expensive and excellent liberal arts degree. Blue collar family, so it took loans, scholarships and multiple jobs while in school to do it but am glad I did. Worked during and paid for my advanced degrees myself.
#47
We do not have too many liberal arts grads, but we do have too many PRIVATE COLLEGE liberal arts grads with $100k in debt or more.
As to the state schools, we do not have too many grads, but we do have too many state school dropouts who never should have been admitted to college in the first place. These people-- maybe a third or more of admits in to state schools-- should have been steered into vocational programs to learn a trade.
We need more, and earlier, vocational tracking. And fewer second-rate country-club style private colleges. Other than that, the system's fine. Best in the world, actually. Ain't broke, don't fix.
#48
"It would take a heap of savings to do that today."
Yes, it would, bigjim. But it appears to me they don't try to save even part of what they'll need for college.
I've actually suggested to people that they save for college, and gotten a whiny "it's impossible to save that much" in response. Maybe so, but what about part of it? Didn't they ever hear of a down payment? (Considering the "trend" in the past few years regarding house-buying, probably not - and look where that got us).
Colleges have raised their prices too much - way above inflation. It needs to stop, and even reverse. We need to get back to encouraging people to go to trade school - where they'll learn something that will earn them one hell of a lot more than a "-- Studies" degree will.
And generally, people need to stop believing there's some Magic Government Money Tree™ that has nothing to do with the amount of money that is confiscated from them for taxes.
In fact, I'd be happy if the government stopped believing in that Tree. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/30/2010 23:30 Comments ||
Top||
#49
Colleges have raised their prices too much - way above inflation. It needs to stop, and even reverse.
There's an inversion at play here: the more expensive the school, the more desirable it seems. No relationship between price and quality. And this is largely because of student aid. The more aid that's provided, the higher the tuition increases.
Easy solution: cut back on student aid. Then public colleges will become vastly cheaper than private schools, and hard-pressed (formerly upper-middle class) middle class families will conclude that applying to second-tier private schools makes no sense. Those schools will wither, the supply of college grads will shrink, the selectivity and quality of public colleges will rise, and the marginal public college admits will fall off, prompting a greater increase in vocational ed.
All good and necessary changes. Means-test all student aid, and let a thousand flowers bloom.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
(Germany is suspending its 3 billion euro (2.6 billion pounds) purchase of EADS's (EAD.PA) Tiger attack helicopter due to technical problems, potentially delaying delivery to its forces in Afghanistan until end-2011. An internal ministry report obtained by Reuters on Tuesday said the step was being taken because of serious problems with the wiring of the helicopter built by EADS unit Eurocopter.
Negotiations on a future Palestinian state might be stuck in neutral. But Jihad al-Wazir, the closest thing to a Palestinian Federal Reserve board chairman, is planning one key aspect of statehood: what the money will be. 
