Facelift for JD Scambusting Resources Page

I've just given a facelift to my JD Scambusting Resources Page.  I am hoping to turn it into a central one-stop shopping page for anyone who is thinking about going to law school or who wants more information about the law school scam.  I also added the list of links to articles for further reading, which I hope to continue expanding with worthy links.  The page also includes links to the most active scambusting blogs and the JD Underground forum.

Please check it out and refer prospective law students here:

http://JDScam.blogspot.com

The Chinese Want to Innovate, Too. (Innovation Will Not Save the U.S. Economy.)

If you have ever followed or participated in the debate over Global Labor Arbitrage and foreign outsourcing, then you probably know that one of the common arguments put forth by the free market dogmatists is that we don't need to worry about filthy low-value-added manufacturing jobs because innovation is the future.  They argue that we must become a nation of innovators producing high-value-added goods and services and that innovation will produce tomorrow's jobs.  They will also sometimes argue that Americans almost have a monopoly on innovation and that we are the best at innovating, as though we have some sort of a racial advantage on innovation.

I don't disagree that innovation is good and that it's important.  It is certainly a touchy-feely notion that just about everyone would agree with.  However, I do take issue with their claims that we don't need to worry about global labor arbitrage because innovation will save us.

First off, any manufacturing or production-type jobs created by innovation can be performed less-expensively with fewer environmental and labor regulations in a far less litigious environment overseas.  Secondly, "necessity is the mother of invention", and the people who are directly involved with the act of manufacturing will end up making many of the improvements to the manufacturing process.  Thirdly, the cost of innovation--the cost of R&D--might very well be less expensive in other countries.  (We have been training foreign graduate students for years with our taxpayer supported universities.)

High Tech Research Going to China with Devastating Effects on Our Ability to Compete and on Our Future by Craig Harrington

It was one thing when America lost its textile industry, its toy making, and the production of basic consumer goods. It is another when we begin losing the core research and development that makes our companies operate. There is a growing shift in innovation. We are now outsourcing more than basic goods and simple service jobs. We are outsourcing high-paying work and sparkling facilities that were once Silicon Valley staples.

Multinational corporations have no reason to stay in the United States; they have no incentive to remain in our expensive market. We cannot expect them, and the jobs they support and create, to stick around based on altruism alone. Industries locate, relocate, and grow wherever the economy presents them with the best opportunities. The U.S. was once the focus of those opportunities, but it is no more.

Furthermore, people in other nations want to innovate, too.  For example, in 2004 India produced about 290,000 new engineers.  And guess what?  China wants to innovate too!  Surprise surprise!  According to this NPR report, the Chinese Aim to Build the Next Silicon Valley.

According to the free market dogmatists, we don't need to worry about the loss of manufacturing jobs and we don't need to do anything to protect ourselves from global labor arbitrage because innovation will save us and only Americans are capable of innovation and the Chinese will be content to work the filthy low-value-added manufacturing jobs.  I call bullshit!

Solar Panel Jobs Go to China -- New Jobless Claims Increase -- Surprised?

According to MSNBC, new jobless claims are up and it's a "surprise".  (A surprise to whom, I do not know.)

In other news, last night ABC News reported that a solar panel innovator was unable to obtain funding from the U.S. government to develop allegedly innovative, improved, less-expensive solar panels in the United States.  He said that he had wanted to set up shop in the U.S.  However, the Chinese government welcomed him with open arms and offered him funding and other assistance.  So, now he is setting up his business in China!

Given that, I don't see any reason why an increase in new jobless claims and persistent high unemployment should come as a surprise to anyone.

This story is also notable because it helps refute the mythological notion that innovation will save the U.S. economy.  Many economists, politicians, and pundits have argued that the U.S. doesn't need to worry about the loss of manufacturing jobs because we will innovate our way back to prosperity.  Domestic innovation, they say, is the key to the future and innovation will create new jobs for Americans tomorrow.  Surprise surprise!  Those highly-anticipated new jobs that will be created by innovation can be performed in China by Chinese labor and probably for far less monetary expense than it would take to perform those jobs in the U.S.

"Unemployed People Need Not Apply"

The Huffington Post recently published an article reporting about job advertisements that explicitly state, "The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered."

Still waiting for a response to the 300 resumés you sent out last month? Bad news: Some companies are ignoring all unemployed applicants.

In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason."

Obviously, I find this absolutely outrageous even though this policy is probably nothing new other than its being mentioned explicitly. The only good thing about these types of ads is that they provide yet more evidence that our current free market system does not work. It reeks of class stratification and immobility whereas a free market is supposed to be about opportunity and meritocracy. It also suggests that having a college education is not a guarantor of vocational success because if you have a college degree and you are unemployed you are automatically disqualified from consideration for these types of jobs.

This form of "classism" almost reminds me of racial discrimination--a person could not possibly be qualified for a job simply because they are unemployed and thus necessarily lack the ability to perform the job. It seems almost Orwellian. Applicants will not be considered for a job because they need a job.

If the hiring personnel who decided that being unemployed should automatically disqualify one from a job lose their heads to the guillotine I won't feel badly for them. I'll say, "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

Edit--the company that placed the ad at The People Place is allegedly Benchmark Electronics. According to the HuffPo article, Sony Ericsson is also supposed to have placed a similar ad but later retracted it and claimed that that is not their policy. (Wanna bet that it actually is for the position that was advertised?)

Sony Ericsson, a global phone manufacturer that recently announced that it would be bringing 180 new jobs to the Buckhead, Ga. area, also recently posted an ad for a marketing position on The People Place. The add specified: "NO UNEMPLOYED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONSIDERED AT ALL." When asked about the ad, a spokeswoman said, "This was a mistake, and once it was noticed it was removed."

Is the Housing Crash Over?

The Economic Collapse Blog has published a list of 12 Reasons Why the U.S. Housing Crash is Far From Over.

I have been following the housing bubble crisis for years, and I have long believed that housing prices are overpriced relative to Americans' incomes. I still think housing prices are too high and that they will continue to decrease. The My Budget 360 blog has a great article showing that housing prices are still high relative to people's income. I wonder, how will a nation of student loan-indebted people who work low-wage service jobs be able to afford all of those houses valued at over $150,000?

The Economic Collapse blog's article needs to add a thirteenth reason for a continued plunge. As Baby Boomers age they will start selling their houses, adding houses to the market, in the hopes of downsizing to smaller condos and eventually to nursing homes (and ultimately to cemetery plots). However, a great many people in the generations behind them who didn't do as well financially don't have the income needed to purchase all of these houses at current prices. (The people who have the money will be leaving the market.)

Call for Article Links Related to the Education Arms Race

I am in the process of putting together a list of links to articles and other resources related to the Education Arms Race and the legal job market. My goal is to create a resource where people can find links to the evidence--news articles and documentaries, etc.--that higher education is often a scam.

If you know of some good articles, videos, or studies that I am missing, please send me an email or post a comment with the link.

Is the Recovery Real? 25 Questions.

If you think that the U.S. economy is recovering, think again. Check out this list of 25 Questions To Ask Anyone Who Is Delusional Enough To Believe That This Economic Recovery Is Real which was posted at The Economic Collapse blog. The author's compilation of the many problems our nation's economy has is very sobering when you see it all in one place.

Excellent Frontline Program About the Effects of the Recession on New York's Upper East Side

I just finished watching the PBS Frontline documentary Close To Home. I never thought I would have an interest in watching a documentary filmed in a hair salon, but the documentary consisted of interviews with patrons at a (seemingly) upscale hair salon describing how the recession and job loss has affected them.

It isn't a profound documentary, but I think it has value in that it helps to chronicle the depression and give people a sense of its depth. Most of the people interviewed had years of experience and college educations. It thus helps serve as anecdotal evidence that, contrary to what many smug free market dogmatists who downplay the recession believe, hard-working experienced college-educated people who are seeking employment can suffer great difficulty finding employment commensurate with their education, experience, and abilities through no real fault of their own.

I enjoy debating politics on various forums and I often end up in protracted debates with people who are employed and successful. They often have difficulty believing that global labor arbitrage is bad for Americans and that it's hard to find a job. Many of these free market advocates seem to maintain the delusional belief that the unemployed are turning down jobs and mooching government benefits. (To hear them tell it, "We wouldn't have so many unemployed people if only those lazy sots would get off the dole and start working all of those jobs that are out there!") They also argue that global labor arbitrage is good for us but can never provide an intuitively convincing argument addressing the supply-and-demand of labor aspects of it. (I'll discuss this further in a long primer I am preparing about global labor arbitrage.)

I'm sure that the message of this documentary will probably fall on deaf ears in regards to the free market dogmatists, but it is still good to have a documentary anecdotal that provides evidence to hopefully rattle their confidence in their position and weaken their resolve. Perhaps it will also help laid-off free market advocates question their economic belief system. (Long-term unemployment and underemployment can go a long way towards changing a person's world view.)

NPR Aired a Ho-hum Story About Georgetown Law Grads Having Difficulty Finding Jobs.

NPR produced a rather mediocre story about the difficulties Georgetown Law School 3Ls are having with finding jobs in the legal profession. I think it aired Friday afternoon on All Things Considered. You can read a transcript and listen to the program here:

Economy Seems Bleak For Graduating Law Students

Of course, I left a number of comments at the NPR site along with links to a few other blogs and articles. It would be awesome if NPR actually did an in-depth story about the law schools reporting misleading employment statistics with the tacit approval of the ABA knowing fully-well that a great many if not most of their graduates would never find work in the legal profession and that they were impoverishing these students for their own pecuniary interests. I really wish we could educate the general public about the huge conflicts of interest that exist between universities, students, and society. I wish I could convince the public that colleges and universities are just as unethical, socially irresponsible, and self-interested as large for-profit corporations.

Here is a response someone posted to one of my comments:

John Johnson (JJ555) wrote:

Anonymous Frank, you wrote:

"NPR--if you would like to do a serious story about lawyer overproduction and whether or not law schools are providing misleading employment stats..."

Don't waste your time. I mentioned all of that during the discussion with my four co-panelists. It was all removed (or cut, or censored, however you want to say it) from the final piece.

It's actually rather surreal.

I don't know what NPR is like in other cities, but in my area NPR airs "support for NPR" ads from law schools, including one from Boston University (which airs nationally, I assume). Perhaps NPR doesn't want to risk angering its supporters. I suppose that that is a sensible policy, but it calls into question the network's journalistic independence.

Excellent 60 Minutes Report on the Causes of the Gulf Oil Spill (you can watch it online).

60 Minutes has produced an excellent report about the cause of the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the subsequent oil spill in the Gulf. The report also includes a discussion and speculation about who exactly is responsible. (This is going to be a boon for lawyers.) The report is more worthwhile and informative than all of the national nightly news broadcasts combined. The heart of the report consists of a riveting interview with a crewman who was lucky to have survived and who remembers details about what led up to the failure of the blowout protector and the explosion. If you enjoy keeping up with current events and issues of legal liability you won't want to miss this. (I find the companies' maneuverings to attempt to shift liability rather entertaining.)

EDIT -- Click here for Part 2 or look for it on the page of Part 1.

Is Our Oil-Based Economy Absurd?

I got a kick out of one of Mark Fiore's recent animated political cartoons.  Enjoy.

EDIT--here is another oil-related cartoon that I enjoyed. I don't necessarily agree with all of these messages; I just find these political cartoons to be amusing.

Does State Spending on Higher Education Slow Economic Growth?

While reading this Associated Press report (pointed out to me by the But I Did Everything Right blog), I came across the following profound material:

Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder [author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much] blames the cultural notion of "credential inflation" for the stream of unqualified students into four-year colleges. His research has found that the number of new jobs requiring college degrees is less than number of college graduates.

Vedder's work also yielded something surprising: The more money states spend on higher education, the less the economy grows — the reverse of long-held assumptions.

If what Vedder says is true, then his study would be absolutely profound.  It makes intuitive sense that wasting a huge amount of resources on education that does not have economic value for society--educating more people than there are jobs for them in the fields for which they are training--would slow economic growth in some sort of way.  However, that is all just theory and conjecture on my part.  It would be great to have a formal academic study demonstrating this.  It's too bad that it would be drowned out by all of the propaganda from the higher education industry, the media, other pundits, and our politicians.

You can listen to an NPR clip where Vedder is interviewed, here:

Is a College Education Worth the Debt?

A Law School is PAYING Students $250 to Post On Its Blog in an Attempt to Encourage Students to Attend (and to take on huge amounts of loan debt).

Do we need any further evidence that the law school industry will stop at almost nothing to increase or maintain law school enrollments?  The Jobless Jurisdoctor posted about this first, but I think it is so damning that it deserves separate mention on this and other blogs.  According to the ABA Journal:

A new student blog at the Michigan State University College of Law may not provide all the answers. However, Kristen Flory, director of the school's marketing and communications department, promoted the idea and apparently sees Spartan bLAWg as a plus factor for persuading applicants about the benefits of attending school there.

About nine of the 18 law students who applied were accepted as bloggers and are now paid $250 to write at least two posts monthly, reports the Associated Press in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).

If the law schools are willing to pay people to post positive content, proving that they are self-interested and in essence for-profit organizations, then why would they not attempt to manipulate their employment statistics or to at least present them in a misleading or fraudulent light?

I wonder, how do law school deans and administrators sleep at night knowing that their costly educational programs will destroy people's lives for decades?  (They probably sleep very well on fine silken sheets in luxurious 5000 foot mansions.)  Do any of these people have a conscience?

PBS Frontline Airs Excellent Program on For-Profit Colleges

Earlier this week PBS's excellent Frontline documentary series aired an insightful program on for-profit colleges called College Inc., which you can watch online.  Although this was not about graduate and professional education nor even undergraduate education at legitimate colleges and state universities, it was still very worthwhile.  Rather, this was about education at the for-profit McColleges or College-Marts that have sprung up like dandelions across the land, such as the University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT, and others.  I found the program to be very interesting because I knew little about these businesses, my never having paid much attention to them.  The New York Times also has an excellent article about for-profit colleges, here, which is worth reading:  The New Poor: In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt.

Apparently, the cost of attendance is much greater than what I had ever imagined, perhaps reaching as high as a whopping $500 per credit hour.  (If you need 128 semester credit hours to graduate with a bachelors degree from a legitimate university, then the cost of attending at $500 per credit hour would come out to a whopping $64,000 over four years for a podunk bachelors degree.)  Much of this is funded by non-dischargeable federal student loans, and it sounds as though those loans are the lifeblood of these businesses.  [End the federal student loans (or, in essence, the non-dischargeability in bankruptcy of these loans) and these businesses would probably die.]  So, various types of accreditation that allow these businesses to fund themselves through students' federal student loans are essential.  Guess who is involved with investing in these for-profit colleges?  Wall Street, which is a sure sign that the owners of these for-profit colleges have students' and society's best interests at heart (not).

As with many for-profit businesses, advertising consumes a considerable percentage of some of the schools' budgets.  It was also mentioned that the cost of the contract-based faculty at some of these schools was less than the advertising budget; the percentage of money spent on the educational product is not great.  (I think it was reported that one school only spent around 10% on faculty--the educational product.)  It also looked like some of the schools may have used telemarketers (!!!) to call people (in presumably low-income neighborhoods) in an attempt to sell them on the idea of going to college.  Admissions and finance counselors may have even received commission-based or at least sales performance-based compensation for trying to convince people to go to college.  So, in essence, some of the schools may have been telemarketing federal student loans and convincing people to take out federal loans on a commission-like basis!

The problem?  Many of these people end up being burdened with non-dischargeable student loan debt and degrees that have questionable economic and employment value.  Of course, many will not find jobs in the fields they trained for and won't be any better off than they were before but will have student loans to pay.  The program also reported about a couple lawsuits.  For example, some nursing graduates are suing one of the schools because, although the program was accredited and allowed them to obtain legitimate nursing licenses, their degrees were not credible in the job market and thus did not really allow them to obtain employment as nurses.  They said that their pediatrics internship was held at a day care center.  (On a side note, you have to wonder whether the accreditation has meaning any longer and whether the accrediting body was doing its job properly.)  In another case, students who had entered into a psychology PhD. program allege that they were (fraudulently?) told that the program was accredited when it was merely seeking accreditation, which means that they cannot obtain licenses to practice as psychologists, essentially rendering their podunk PhD's worthless.  I'm under the impression that these students received a hard-sell; they may have been sold on the program by people who were, in essence, salespeople for the college.

So who are these for-profit colleges marketed to?  They seem to be marketed to the lower classes, especially to minorities and people who might be the first member of a family to ever go to college and whose relatives wouldn't know (better) to advise them to attend legitimate, more established colleges and universities.  Also, presumably many of those people would be unable to gain admission to state universities.  It was also mentioned that (far less expensive and "non-profit") community colleges are packed and that now people are having difficulty gaining admission to them, leaving the for-profit mills as their only higher education alternative.

So why are all of these people, non-traditional students whose backgrounds probably would not allow them to gain admission to state universities and perhaps even crowded community colleges, so desperate to go to college?  Because our nation's economy is in the shitter and everyone has been indoctrinated with the notion that the only way to advance economically (or to merely be able to obtain a lower middle class job) is to get a college education.  Presumably, the only jobs they can find otherwise are dead-end poverty-wage jobs, so why not roll the dice on these for-profit colleges?  Since our politicians and economists, in their great wisdom, allowed American manufacturing (as well as knowledge-based) jobs to be sent to India, China, and Mexico, to be filled with foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas, or (more likely to affect the students attending these for-profit colleges) given to masses of immigrants (both legal and illegal) the students are under tremendous pressure to find knowledge-based employment.
 
The end result is that the job market will be flooded with these McBachelors degrees.  (Traditional state universities and established private colleges were already flooding the market.)  Also the bachelors degree will become the modern equivalent of a high school diploma, except it isn't free.  However, in spite of all of this higher education, knowledge-based, college-education-requiring jobs will not magically materialize into existence to accommodate everyone who has a college degree.  All of the time, money, and resources invested in this unprecedented amount of higher education will change almost nothing about the state of our nation's job market.  It will not create jobs or wealth for anyone other than the owners of the colleges, some administrators, and perhaps some faculty (if they receive decent compensation at all which I highly doubt).  Instead, in reality, it is all just a huge amount of economic waste.  Consequently, our society will be filled with unemployed or underemployed-and-out-of-field people with student loan debt and our nation may gain the distinction of having the most well-educated Walmart employees.

I have been railing against the problems of degree overproduction in graduate and professional education for years.  Prior to a viewing of College, Inc. I was aware of the existence of the for-profit schools, but I was unaware how expensive they were nor that the scope of these operations was so large.  Thus, I highly recommend a viewing of this video.  Hopefully Frontline will one day do a report about the law school and graduate school scams at "non-profit" state universities and private colleges, but I doubt it.

Only in America...

...would a high school principal send American flag-wearing students home so as not to offend Mexican-American students on Cinco de Mayo.  Being booted out of high school (for a day) for a non-incendiary display of patriotism could only happen in America.  Would principal Boden find a t-shirt with an image of an American flag covered in excrement more appropriate and less offensive?

Will the huge oversupply of people with college degrees force you to take mind-enhancing drugs in order to compete?

In professional sports, one of the reasons for banning steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs is to prevent those drugs from becoming de facto necessities.  In other words, if a large percentage of the players you are competing against for roster spots on professional teams are taking performance enhancing drugs, then you, too, will be forced to take steroids in order to compete.  Honest, ethical people thus have a competitive disadvantage.

According to a report on Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes, college students and professionals in the workplace are now taking prescription drugs (often the ones prescribed for ADD) to enhance focus and mental awareness in the hopes of earning higher grades or being able to produce faster and better work product.  Many of these people do not have prescriptions and are purchasing these drugs in a second-hand manner, presumably illegally.  One of the interviewees mentioned that lawyers have used these drugs (big surprise):

Adams says other drugs are also being used as neuroenhancers. One he has tried is Provigil, first developed to treat the symptoms of the rare sleep disorder narcolepsy.

"People found that it was helpful as a stimulant for, you know, working in law offices and in academics and stuff like this. So I would say it's in the past five to ten years that it's become popular as a performance enhancer," Adams said.  (60 Minutes report: Boosting Brain Power.)

The state of our nation's economy, the Education Arms Race, and the tremendous amount of competition for knowledge-based and professional jobs is one of the primary motivators for this kind of drug abuse.  Otherwise honest, hard-working, presumably ethical people are being driven, perhaps subconsciously, to take prescription mind-enhancing drugs so that they can boost their performance and outdo the competition.  The pressure to use mind enhancing drugs is just one more symptom of Education Overproduction, the Education Arms Race, and our nation's hyper-competitive job market for knowledge-based, college-education-requiring white collar jobs.

Perhaps these neuroenhancers will prove beneficial to society by allowing people to improve their cognitive ability and focus.  I don't have a position on whether or not they are good or bad or beneficial, but until they are completely legal and available over-the-counter, people might still feel compelled to purchase them illegally in order to compete.

Democrats Introduce Bill to Make Private Student Loans Dischargeable in Bankruptcy!

Special thanks to"Lawsucks" at JD Underground for posting about this.  (It was posted earlier at the Education Matters blog, but I am not a regular reader of that blog, though perhaps I should be.)  If this bill passes, I think it would be profound, so I want to post about it here.

According to Dick Durbin's webpage, he and some other Democrats are working on a Bill that would make private student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, just like other loans.  Combined with the Federal government's new Income Based Repayment (IBR) program, graduates who are unsuccessful in securing employment sufficient to allow them to pay off their loans might be able to free themselves from their shackles.  If you are in the process of racking up mountains of private student loan debt, you might want to consider borrowing a little extra ahead of time so that you can afford to hire a bankruptcy attorney.

If this Bill were to actually become law it could revolutionize higher education by restoring a negative feedback loop to the higher education-student loan industrial complex.  Imagine what would happen if the banks no longer wanted to risk $100,000 on law students who needed to borrow $150,000 for their JDs knowing that a very large percentage of those students will never find work in the legal profession.  (If tuition is $35,000/year, which is now very common, and the cost of living is $15,000/year, then students may need to borrow $150,000+, ignoring undergraduate loans.)  If students can borrow up to $56,000 in federal loans, they would need about $100,000 in private loans.  (My numbers for the federal limit may be out of date.)

One consideration for law graduates might be whether declaring bankruptcy would make them "unethical" for the purposes of state bar's character and fitness examinations.  So, declaring bankruptcy on your private student loans might also eliminate the possibility of your ever being able to practice law in the future.  However, if you graduate from law school and cannot find a job in the field but do find yourself buried under mountains of private student loan debt, bankruptcy might become a serious consideration.  In fact, in this economy you might find yourself without any viable alternatives.

Note that there is one potential loophole.  Depending on the exact wording of the Bill that gets signed into law (if it gets passed at all), this may not apply to private lenders that are 'nonprofits" or that are associated with "nonprofits", in which case most private loans might not be dischargeable at all and thus it may not have any real effect.

Potential effects of this legislation might be that:

(1.) A negative feedback loop could be restored to the higher education-student loan industrial complex.  This could also put pressure on universities and especially the law schools to reign in the spiraling costs of higher education.

(2.) Students might no longer be able to obtain private loans without having cosigners who have a significant amount of assets (parents).  This might be one way the banks will try to circumvent bankruptcy.  This might make it impossible for students from poor families and for students whose parents are not foolhardy enough to put themselves on the hook from being able to obtain private student loans.

(3.) As a result, the number of students who are able to pursue expensive graduate and professional degrees that have dubious economic value could be reduced.  Banks might actually have to consider whether or not attending second, third, and fourth tier law schools (or all law schools in general) at a cost of $150,000 is a good investment.

(4.) Interest rates on private student loans could increase, which means that successful graduates will have higher loan payments in order to subsidize less fortunate graduates.

(5.) Some law, business, and other graduate schools might be forced to close their doors as a result of having too few students.  Of course, they will scream to high heaven before that happens and the federal government will probably step in to provide federal student loans so that everyone can pursue higher education.

I am not an expert on legal ethics, so I am left wondering:

If you declare bankruptcy, are you essentially repudiating your JD and eliminating any possibility of ever being able to practice law? Would declaring bankruptcy magically make you "unethical" and "unfit" to practice law as far as character and fitness examination committees are concerned? 

What would happen if you declared bankruptcy after you had obtained your law licenses and never reported it to the Bar? (Are you even required a personal bankruptcy to the Bar?)

Are there any states where a bankruptcy after having earned a JD would not preclude you from passing a character and fitness examination?

I did a Google search and found few articles about it in the newspapers.  Here are a few blog posts I found after doing a Google search:

House and Senate Introduce Bills to Make Student Loans Dischargeable in Bankruptcy (Student Lending Analytics Blog)

 

Big News--Senators Durbin and Cohen Introducing New Bill (Education Matters blog)

Methinks This is a Huge Sign of Progress (Education Matters blog)

Saturday Morning Law School Cartoon Compilation

I have finished compiling a list of satirical cartoons for the JD Underground and law school scambusting communities.  Please let me know if I've missed any.  Enjoy!
 
http://flustercucked.blogspot.com/p/funny-law-school-scam-cartoons.html

Price Manipulation in the Precious Metals Markets?

The Economic Collapse blog has just posted an article reporting manipulation in the prices of silver and gold.  The article also hints at corruption in the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (where Brooksley Born,  who tried to sound the alarm about unregulated derivatives trading, used to work).  Here is a stunning quote from the article:

When people think they are buying "gold", they are actually just buying pieces of paper that say they own gold.

In fact, during the CFTC hearings, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group confirmed that the LBMA banks actually have approximately a hundred times more gold deposits than actual gold bullion.

Uh oh.

So what happens if everyone decides that they want actual physical delivery of their gold?

It would be such a mess that it is painful even to think about it.

The truth is that right now most of the trading activities on the London exchange are just paper for paper.

But people get into gold because they want to be in a real commodity.

In fact, there are thousands of clients around the globe who think they own huge deposits of gold bullion, and are being charged large storage fees on that imaginary bullion, but what they really own are a bunch of pieces of paper.

This almost reminds me of the housing bubble crisis.  I have seen many ads peddling gold to the masses on television and wondered exactly who was making the money off of these sales.  I suspect that the people purchasing the gold are the ones being fleeced.  Of course, this is just one more example of our federal government's failure to properly regulate economic activity.

Do the Chinese think we are retarded?

According to Donald Trump, some of the Chinese businessmen he knows think we are completely insane for allowing them to have our industries and our jobs.  Perhaps this is what we need.  We need to have some powerful, influential wealthy people who still have a conscience and some scintilla of concern for the lower classes to help change our government's self-destructive economic policies.  The lower classes certainly don't have the ability to do it.  You can find the interview here:

http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/trump-sounds-alarm-china