The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million -- and as much as $1.6 billion -- through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Alan  Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.

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I was only six years old and had no idea what a “debt” was, let alone FDR’s. But I had nightmares about it for weeks.

Yet as the years went by my father stopped talking about “FDR’s debt,” and since I was old enough to know something about economics I never worried about it. My children have never once mentioned FDR’s debt. My four-year-old grandchild hasn’t uttered a single word about it.

By the end of World War II, the national debt was 120 percent of the entire economy. But by the mid-1950s, it was half that.

Why did it shrink? Not because the nation stopped spending. We had a Korean War, a Cold War, we rebuilt Germany and Japan, sent our GI’s to college and helped them buy homes, expanded education at all levels, and began constructing the largest public-works program in the nation’s history — the interstate highway system.

“FDR’s debt” shrank in proportion to the national economy because the national economy grew so fast.

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But! Whoops, turns out they were wrong, about that one central fact that has been repeated as the gospel truth by purveyors of Tough Talk on debt the world over for the last three years. They screwed up their spreadsheet. Turns out average GDP growth in countries with debt-GDP ratios 90 percent and higher is positive, not negative.

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This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity budget states their study "found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth." The Washington Post editorial board takes it as an economic consensus view, stating that "debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth."

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The ACLU likens the problem to modern-day debtors’ prisons. Jailing people for debt pushes poor defendants farther into poverty and costs counties more than the actual debt because of the cost of arresting and incarcerating individuals, the report said.

“The use of debtors’ prison is an outdated and destructive practice that has wreaked havoc upon the lives of those profiled in this report and thousands of others throughout Ohio,” the report said.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor of the Ohio Supreme Court, responding to the ACLU’s request to take action, promised to review the findings. O’Connor told the group in a letter Wednesday: “you do cite a matter that can and must receive further attention.”

The report says courts in Huron, Cuyahoga, and Erie counties are among the worst offenders.

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America owes this debt of gratitude to Boehner after he finally came clean on yesterday's edition of ABC's "This Week" and admitted that "we do not have an immediate debt crisis." (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on CBS' "Face the Nation").

In offering up such a stunningly honest admission, the GOP leader has put himself on record as agreeing with President Obama, who has previously acknowledged that demonstrable reality. But the big news here isn't just about the politics of a Republican House speaker tacitly admitting they agree with a Democratic president. It is also about a bigger admission revealing the fact that the GOP's fiscal alarmism is not merely some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends.

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Here’s how they frame the issue:

… less fiscal tightening this year would lead to stronger growth in 2013 but, if not accompanied by sufficient additional tightening in later years, would also restrain real output and income in the middle of the decade and beyond owing to higher federal debt.

I must say, though, that I find this all a bit of a muddle. In 2013, according to the budget office, fiscal cuts — both tax increases like the end of the payroll tax break and spending cuts like the sequester (CBO assumes it will be implemented to the tune of $85 billion in cuts starting next month) — are cutting the economy’s growth rate pretty much in half, from a bit below 3 percent to 1.4 percent.

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The extent of this myth is highlighted by a new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which indicates that nearly half of all employed college graduates have jobs that require less than a four-year college education. Despite such sobering statistics, the higher-education complex remains remarkably successful at ensuring that American taxpayers fund the acquisition of educational credentials that, in many cases, leave the people who obtain them worse off than they were before they enrolled.

Far from being “priceless,” as the promoters of ever-more spending on higher education would have Americans believe, both undergraduate and post-graduate education is turning out to be a catastrophic investment for many young and not-so-young adults.

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“New England School of Law, Summer Program, Galway, Ireland – teaching stipend: $15,000.”

Another part of the form reveals that the same school reimbursed Roberts for his airfare, meals and lodging for at least the two-week period during which the course -- on the history of the Supreme Court -- was held.  Roberts co-taught the course, which met seven times for two-hour periods, with a law professor, Richard Lazarus.

Roberts and Lazarus taught the same course on the scenic island of Malta last summer, and will do so again amid the charming old world architecture of Prague this July.  (Lazarus did not respond to my request for information regarding what he was being paid to teach the course or how responsibility for teaching and grading it was divided between himself and the chief justice).

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David Graeber — of Occupy Wall Street fame — has written, in Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a grand intellectual project and a call for action. He investigates debt across time and across cultures and finds it to be a primary institution, preceding exchange, money and any notion of “the economy.” Debt is a building block for ever more elaborate social organization, because it creates fluid structures of subordination. Though in principle the sum of all debts should equal the sum of all credits, in practice debtors are many and creditors few. Today, there is growing concern about income inequality in America — but it is wealth inequality that captures the relation of debtors and creditors.

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Earlier this year, two and half years into a long-distance relationship and after over a year of serious job searching, I finally found a job that allowed me to move 8,000 miles across the world to join my boyfriend. About five weeks later, he finally said what had been pretty obvious since I arrived -- he was no longer interested in me or our relationship. He refused to explain or seek counseling, saying  the "feeling was gone." While breaking up, things were said and done, or not said or done by both of us and we are out of contact, permanently, I suspect.

I moved out and things are generally going OK. Life here is much more costly on a solo budget and I sometimes feel lonely being so far from anyone I really know or who shares my language/culture. So, I've reframed this as a one- or two-year adventure and this helps me feel more positive when I miss my friends and family back home. I can still get angry that he pulled the rug out from under me so my first impression at the new job was of a distracted person with personal issues. Or that the great new chapter opened with being pushed away and left alone. But, I've turned things around at work and I recognize I am better off without him.

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As part of the study, a select group was shown a sad movie (this one, perhaps?) and were then asked to make financial decisions. Compared to subjects who had not watched the video, the sad group were far more likely to make choices that presented a short-term benefit, but were less profitable in the long run.

Blame it on "present bias," a phenomenon that makes us crave immediate gratification at the expense of even greater rewards later on. It's a tendency that many people exhibit in everyday life, but add a little melancholy into the mix and you've got yourself a recipe for financial disaster. Lead researcher Jennifer Lerner explains that "compared with neutral emotion, sadness -- and not just any negative emotion -- made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forgo greater future gains in return for instant gratification."

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Haha, just kidding, they are actually getting headlines because they're launching a campaign about the federal debt. Because, you know, that is a thing kids care about. Let's meet these do-gooders, courtesy of Suzy Khimm at Ezra Klein's respected "WonkBlog."

A group of young deficit hawks is making it their mission to warn the Millennial Generation about the dangers of an out-of-control deficit through a new organization called the Can Kicks Back. “The debt is now the top of line issue for most young people. We believe it’s the most important issue,” said Ryan Schoenike, president of the group. “Not addressing this issue leads to a lower situation — higher taxes, less jobs, more debt.”

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In this context, the decision of a group of corporate CEOs to form a new group, the Campaign to Fix the Debt, to push for a budget deal can be seen as a big deal. This group brings back memories of a 1970s TV ad that featured a middle-aged man wearing a bad toupee pushing totally fake-looking toupees. The narrator assured viewers that no one would recognize that these toupees were not your real hair saying, “I wouldn’t lie to you, I’m the president of the company.”

It’s hard not to think of this ad when listening to the agenda being pushed by the Campaign to Fix the Debt. This is yet another project supported by Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson. For the last two decades Peterson has used his fortune to bankroll a number of organizations that were ostensibly pushing fiscal responsibility, but always had the same punch line: cut Social Security and Medicare.

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The video below highlights the strength of this trend; housing developers are designing houses under the premise that a young person or grandparent will be moving back in. Watch below (via NewsFix):

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“Fix the Debt ” is a coalition of more than 80 CEOs who claim they know best how to deal with our nation’s fiscal challenges. The group boasts a $60 million budget just for the initial phase of a massive media and lobbying campaign.

The irony is that CEOs in the coalition’s leadership have been major contributors to the national debt they now claim to know how to fix. These are guys who’ve mastered every tax-dodging trick in the book. And now that they’ve boosted their corporate profits by draining the public treasury, how do they propose we put our fiscal house back in order? By squeezing programs for the poor and elderly, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

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Servicers have misapplied payments, given borrowers bad advice, and reported incorrect information to credit bureaus, according to one of the reports. The findings were based on the agency's recent tracking of student loan complaints, focusing on the companies who handle private student loans.

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