Extra Credit, Monday Edition

World Bank to Lend $100 Billion to Poor Nations Over 3 Years: Including $35 billion to middle-income countries by the middle of next year. Finally, the World Bank can start making money from lending again!

Tosca Monthly Shareholder Report, October 2008: Down 20% on the month and 66% on the year, they whine about how there's actually lots of "the factual upside in the core retained portfolio", whatever that's supposed to mean.

The global slumpometer: What constitutes a "global recession"?

Et in Arcadia Ego: "Private educational institutions have been able to charge whatever the hell they want to for so long because Education has become the new Religion of the socially ambitious. There is almost no other way to classify the fervor, zealotry, and passion with which the parents and children of upwardly mobile classes pursue, discuss, and glorify the imprimatur of an Ivy League or equivalent degree, and the supposedly necessary interim steps thereto. Ask the typical upper middle class parents on the East or West Side of Manhattan whether they would prefer Junior to save his immortal soul or graduate from Princeton or Yale with a 4.0 grade point average, and they will look at you as if you had three heads. There simply is no question in their minds that eternal salvation takes a back seat to the right sheepskin on the wall."