(By Louis Basenese
) It's Friday in the
Wall Street Daily Nation!
For the newbies in the group, once a week I embrace the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I select a handful of graphics to convey important economic or investment insights.
This week, I'm confirming the source of the next debt crisis (hint: it's not a European nation), raising another objection to Facebook's IPO, helping you shuck responsibility – a new American pastime – about the current stock market selloff and, finally, I'm (gasp!) defending the U.S. dollar.
So let's get to it…
The Danger Lurks Within U.S. Borders
Forget subprime loans. Forget European government bonds. Those debt crises have already imploded.
Instead, we need to worry about the backpack full of debt that the average college student is carrying around. (Hat tip to my colleague, Martin Denholm. He warned about frightening student debt levels a long, long time ago.)
In 2011, student debt increased 64%. It now eclipses credit card and auto debt, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Tick… tick… tick… The BOOM is coming!
When it does, maybe we'll learn that debt is bad. But, sigh… probably not.
If the Getting is So Good…
Why are the insiders getting out of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB)?
I know I've written ad nauseam about Facebook's IPO. But I have to share one more thing…
Look at how much of the shares offered in the IPO are coming from insiders. It eclipses the amount sold by insiders for other big internet/social media IPOs, including Amazon(Nasdaq: AMZN), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN), LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA).