Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Avail Hidden Benefits Through Student Debt Consolidation Loan

Student debt consolidation loan is the loan designed to merge all the debts of students into a single payable amount to be paid in monthly installments. Student debt consolidation loan removes that extra burden of multiple monthly payments from your mind. Interest rate, the foremost requirement of any loan is lower under student debt consolidation loans.
Student debt consolidation loans are available in both secured and unsecured forms and they are available to everybody even to people with bad credit.
The raison d'ĂȘtre behind students looking for student debt consolidation loan is to get rid of their multiple debts. Debts may trap students due to numerous reasons such as:
 Hike in tuition fee
 Unexpected expenses like medical bills
 Other unforeseen expenses
 Payment of student loans
These expenses give rise to financial problems for students as they don't have a regular source of income. Increasing number of debts may worsen the condition as they have to face harassing calls from lenders. In such a scenario, student debt consolidation loans are an optimum solution for students to get rid of their debts.
Student debt consolidation loan is specifically crafted for students. A student debt consolidation loan comes with lower interest rate and most importantly these loans can be easily availed by just a click of your mouse.
Before you apply for any student consolidation loan you have to fulfill the eligibility criteria as under:

  • The student should no longer be enrolled in a school


  • The student should be paying the debts for at least in the grace period of loan period.

  • Student debt consolidation loan has some inborn benefits that will definitely suit all students such as:
    1. The interest rate under student debt consolidation loans usually comes at 2% - 3%.
    2. Students have the benefits that there will be no interest rate charged while students pursue their studies.
    3. Students will get a number of rebates while they go for student debt consolidation loans.
    It is advised that you gather enough knowledge regarding each and every aspect of student debt consolidation loans before you apply for the same. You can instantly search for student debt consolidation loan at just a single click of your mouse. Overall it's a good opportunity to get relieved from your multiples debts.

    Dare To Achieve Your Goal with Student Debt Consolidation Loans

    Student debt consolidation loans can enable you to merge your multiple debts under one debt. Consolidation of debts also makes it easier for you to do away with the burden of debts. Student debt consolidation loans can reduce the size of your loan repayments, fetch you lower interest rate on the existing loan amount.
    Besides these advantages it can help you to stay away from dealing with copious creditors'. As consolidation of debts would mean that you will be bound with one creditor.
    Education is what makes you stand apart from others. Student debt consolidation loans can facilitate you to bridge the gap between your tuition fees and other expenses with ease. As all you need to worry about is a single monthly repayment instead of diverse repayment amounts. In fact, it can evade the chances of missed payments.
    The most common categories of student debt consolidation loans are:
    o Federal student debt consolidation loans
    o Private student debt consolidation loans
    Federal student debt consolidation loans are an affordable loan option available to you if you are a student. It usually encompasses lower interest rates as compared to interest rate tagged with other forms of financial tools. Lower interest rate is due to fact that these are dictated by the government.
    Private student debt consolidation loans are also known as alternative student loans or personal student loans. It is an ideal option after all other form of financing are exhausted. As the interest rate on these loans are comparatively high as the interested are not read out by the government but private lenders.
    Rising expenses in education lead students to procure high student loans. These students' loans can prove to have negative repercussion on a student's financial responsibilities. In turn, affects a student's studies. Student debt consolidation loans can provide students with an ideal option to unsaddle the burden of student loans.
    Even if you are coping with a bad credit history, student debt consolidation loans can offer you with juicy benefits. It can help you to reinstate your credit score by making timely repayments and improve chances of better loan opportunities in the future.

    The 411 On Getting A Student Debt Consolidation Loan

    Student debt consolidation loan means having the multiple student loans replaced with a single loan with a lower monthly payment scheme to be paid over a longer repayment period. Though a student debt consolidation loan is beneficial, it is important to know its pros and cons before signing up for one. The huge students' loans have an impact on your future decisions and on your credit history. So make it a point to have your student loan debt not exceed 8% of your income to get a good credit history.
    There are many types of student loans, but the most common student loans are the private and federal loans. It is not advisable to go in for student debt consolidation loan by mixing these two loans together. Instead, it is better to consolidate the federal student loans and then the private loans, separately. This is because when consolidating both these kinds of loans, the federal loan benefits will all be lost.
    For one to be eligible for consolidating his/her student loans, it is important that the person is no longer enrolled in a school. The person should also be repaying the debt or at least be in the grace period of the loan. Through student debt consolidation loan, instead of making multiple payments to all your lenders, there is only one debt consolidation company to whom you have to make your payments. It is the job of this company to pay off your lenders. Interest rates are lowered as the debt consolidation is a second mortgage, which has lower interest rates. Lower interest rates lead to lower monthly payments. And with only one payment, the monthly installment will be lower too. As you only have to pay a single person, all clarifications can be made through only one person instead of approaching all your lenders.
    All things have their share of good things and bad points. There is always a chance of falling into more debt with student debt consolidation loan. This is because there is only one payment to be made, with more money remaining at the end of the month. This may prompt you to use your credit cards and spend money again. Student debt consolidation programs take a long time to cover, so you will be spending a good number of years repaying the loan. Moreover, though the interest rate of the student debt consolidation loan is low, over the long loan period, you will actually be spending more than you would have spent if you had retained the individual loans.

    Wednesday, March 2, 2011

    A Problem with Medicare

    In “Let's Begin Obama's 'Conversation' on Entitlements,” the Wall Street Journal identifies a major problem with Medicare.

    According to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, an average couple retiring last year can look forward to consuming Medicare benefits with a present value of $343,000, having paid Medicare taxes with a present value of $109,000.

    And don't let that figure get your hopes up, because even that $109,000 is not available today. That money was spent long ago. The government's trust funds are a fraud. Indeed, by some large amount, society missed out over many decades on domestic savings and investment that would have taken place had workers not been relying on unfunded government promises to support them in retirement.

    There are only four solutions: raise taxes, cut benefits, reform Medicare, or some combination of the other three.

    Tuesday, March 1, 2011

    Driving Costs and the Demand for Cars


    Gasoline is an important complement to cars.  Other things equal, as gasoline prices rise, miles driven and car sales decline, but more can be learned by separating cars into makes and models, making one a substitute for another.  But the strength of that relationship depends on a number of characteristics.  One make and model, a Honda Civic, may be a strong substitute for another, a Toyota Corolla, and a weak substitute for another, a Chevy Tahoe. 

    With the price of related goods for the demand car model in mind, I constructed a table based on the per mile total cost to operate the seven different models over five years assuming the cars were driven 15,000 miles per year.  All the costs except fuel were taken from Yahoo Autos.  Fuel costs were estimated using the average of EPA City and Highway estimates at gasoline price beginning at $2.75/gallon, increasing at $.25 increments to $4.25/gallon.  Fuel economy ranged from 18 City/27 Highway for the Ford Taurus to 51 City/48 Highway for the Toyota Prius. 

    This is a simple model; the only cost that changes as gasoline prices rise is fuel.  I expect that other elements of cost would change as the price as well, For example, the price of fuel efficient cars would rise relative to less efficient automobiles both in the new and used markets.  Because I don’t have data to predict the changes in new car purchase price and the used car sales price, I did not modify Yahoo’s cost estimates.  The graph of the per mile total cost of the seven vehicles yielded some expected results and some surprises.  As expected, the total cost per mile of the hybrids rose more slowly than non-hybrids, but not dramatically so.  I anticipated that the total cost per mile of the non-hybrids would be lower at low gasoline prices but would be higher than the hybrids at high gasoline prices.  The Civic and the Fusion both came in non-hybrid and hybrid models and in both cases, the hybrids had lower total cost per mile than their counterparts at $2.75, and that cost differential grew as prices rose.

    The reason that gasoline prices did not influence total cost per mile is that they are a relatively small part of overall cost.  Fuel cost never rose above 33% of total cost (Mazda 3 Sports i), and were as low as 17% of total cost at $4.25/gallon (Toyota Prius).  In general, models that were relatively less expensive at low gasoline prices were less expensive at high gasoline prices.

    Consumers will try to lower the cost of owning a car, but how?  A more sophisticated inquiry might study the complementarity of makes and models.  Is a minivan a stronger or weaker complement to a large SUV than a crossover?  Likewise, is a compact hybrid a stronger or weaker complement to a compact than a subcompact?

    Thursday, February 24, 2011

    Thoughts on Revolution and Oil Disruption

    Revolution is sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East.  The governments facing this spontaneous uprising are universally totalitarian.  Some have had good relations with the United States and some have not.  No one knows if the new governments will be more democratic or less, or if more democratic regimes will be less friendly to the United State and our allies.  Assume the worst, that anti-American, totalitarian, radicalized pro-Iranian governments replace current regimes.  What will this mean for oil output and prices?

    I believe that after a temporary spike due to the fear of disruption of or actual disruption of supplies, output and production will resort to their pre-revolution trend.  My conclusion is based on two assumptions.  First, like their predecessors, the new regimes will attempt to maximize oil revenue.  This means setting a monopoly price through OPEC or some similar cartel.  These countries are poor, and long-run reduction of production below the optimal cartel price would reduce economic activity leading to greater discontent.  The new regimes would face counter revolution elements in their own government willing to supply oil to the rest of the world and these challengers would be able to promise bigger rewards to backers than the current regime based on increased oil production.  Second, although the new regimes would set prices through a cartel, they would have as much incentive to cheat on cartel prices as those they replace, making it difficult for the cartel to maintain production quotas.  In short, the revolutionary frenzy may be bad for the U.S. diplomatically, it will not mean a great deal economically.

    Saturday, February 19, 2011

    Two Problems with Profiling

    Profiling is a method of observing characteristics, actions and circumstances to draw conclusions about a person.  It is a useful tool that we all use every day.  Doctors build health profiles based on age, weight, race, sex and personal habits such as drinking and smoking.  Amazon books uses profiling to suggest books you might be interested in based on past purchases and current browsing. 

    Profiling becomes controversial when race is one of the observed characteristics or when the profiler can legally use coercion on the profiled even when the profiled characteristic is statistically based.  Suppose Officer Holmes of the Arcadia Police Department observes that drug use has crept into his normally peaceful jurisdiction.  He travels to Gotham and notes that four times as many Hispanic males are arrested on drug charges than Asian males.  Based on that observation, he focuses his time and other police resources on Hispanic males to reduce drug related crime.  The problem could be one of reverse causality.  Perhaps more Hispanic males were arrested in the past because the police harbor prejudices against Hispanic males.  They are arrested more frequently because they are investigated more frequently.

    Now assume that Officer Holmes has read scientifically conducted research based on surveys that finds that 12% of Hispanic males acknowledge illegal drug compared to 3% of Asian males.  He is scientifically justified in using race as a profiling characteristic, but problems remain.  In the course of his work, using race, sex, location and other behaviors to profile potential drug users, he observes 1,000 Hispanic males.  Of these, he stops and questions 270, and of these, he arrests and charges 60 with a drug related crime and all are convicted.  The remaining 210 Hispanic males were innocent and while they were only stopped and questioned, may resent Holmes’ behavior and grow to distrust the police.

    Profiling becomes more objectionable as the ability to correctly identify offenders decreases and the level of coercion increases.  On January 8, 2011, Jared Loughner made himself notorious by killing six and wounding twelve in a failed assassination attempt of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  Some called for more stringent gun control.  Second Amendment supporters and gun owners argued that it would be wrong to inconvenience many gun owners for the actions of a single deranged man.  Others noting that friends, family, students and teachers had observed Loughner’s erratic behavior and on several occasions had called the police for assistance suggest that a stronger enforcement mechanism be developed to help youths with mental disorders and protect the public.

    Let’s say that Arizona imposes a new law that that allows authorities to medicate youths profiled by behavioral characteristics as potentially violent.  Assume that researchers followed the behavior of 10,000 young adults and one in a thousand (10 young adults in our sample) have a disorder that will lead to acts of violence.  Now assume that we implement a system that correctly identifies 80% of those with potentially violent mental disorders (8 of the ten potentially violent young adults are identified.  Two are not.).  But there is a tradeoff.   In our example, there are 9,990 young adults who are not potentially violent yet one time in a hundred, or 99.9 times a young adult will be wrongly identified as being potentially violent and subject to forced mediation.  Is catching 8 of 10 potentially violent worth the cost of forcefully medicating nearly 100 who are not?  If this tradeoff is too high, how many wrongful forced medications will you tolerate to stop the violence these youths will cause?