If you have friends just out of college and a few hours to kill, ask them how bad their student loan debt is.

The answer in almost every instance is more terrible than you can imagine. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says U.S. students have amassed $1.1 trillion in loan debt -- double what its was in 2007 and greater than any other consumer debt not tied to a mortgage.

Whether graduates have a "useless" degree in liberal arts or a "practical" degree like an MBA, chances are they're being absolutely flattened by school-related debt. Their jobs aren't helping pay down that debt, either, as roughly 284,000 college graduates are making minimum wage and The Center For College Affordability and Productivity reports that nearly half of the college graduates from the class of 2010 are in jobs that don't require a bachelor's degree.

 

Remember that shift in the top income tax rate from 35% to 39.6% that followed the fiscal cliff debates? It's nowhere near what the top earners in the U.S. can afford to help keep the nation's finances afloat.

Andrew Fieldhouse at The Fiscal Times put the nation's upper economic echelons on notice last week by letting them know they're not paying anything close to what economists feel is their fair share.

Amid stifled economic output, stagnant job growth, sequestration cuts, the expired payroll tax cuts, the stonewalling of the American Jobs Act and the gradual replacement of stimulus with European-style austerity, Fieldhouse says a dollar of government spending cuts will do four to seven times as much economic damage than an additional dollar of revenue collected from upper-income taxpayers.

 

Gun control advocates are urging News Corp. (NWS.A) not to air Saturday's NASCAR race sponsored by the National Rifle Association (NRA), scheduled for broadcast on the Fox network.

The NRA 500 was denounced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) in a letter to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch as "inappropriate in the immediate wake of the Newtown massacre," according to a report in Politico. He was particularly concerned about "the live shooting of guns at the end of the race."

 

A spokesman for New York-based News Corp. declined to comment on Murphy's letter.

 

Most children would scream in terror if a giant talking pitcher of Kool-Aid crashed through the wall. But the drink-mix brand used that image for years, and the Kool-Aid Man is now famous for his love of flying bricks and his guttural, "Oh, yeah!"

That's about to change. Kraft Foods (KRFT) is unveiling a new Kool-Aid Man Monday. He's now computer-generated, he wears his flavors like clothing, he talks and even has a bit of a sense of humor.

A new commercial shows a crystal-clear Kool-Aid Man stepping out of the shower and picking an outfit from a pantry of different Kool-Aid mixes, the Associated Press reports. "I put my pants on one leg at a time," he says. "Except my pants are 22 different flavors. I've got grape pants, I've got watermelon pants." 

Google's (GOOG) latest feature might have a terrible name -- the Inactive Account Manager -- but it addresses a serious problem: What happens to your digital assets after you die? 

 

It's not a comforting thought, but with more of our lives recorded digitally via email, Facebook (FB), Twitter, Instagram and a thousand other applications, it's become one of those big questions most of us will face. 

 

Google's approach is to prod its users into figuring out what they want done with their data before they die. 

 

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg for making off with their idea for Facebook (FB), have become major Bitcoin investors.

They may have the largest allocation of Bitcoins out there, according to The New York Times. The twins told the newspaper they own nearly $11 million in Bitcoins -- or, at least, their stake was valued at $11 million Thursday morning when trading was temporarily halted at around $120 per Bitcoin.

After a week of intensely volatile trading, Bitcoins were valued at around $77 Friday (see the live price here), a drop of nearly 36% from what The Times reported. That means the Winklevii, as they are informally known, have seen their Bitcoin investment plunge by nearly $4 million. 

When the challenges facing the medical industry come up, one doesn't normally think of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. But he illustrated a stark reality awaiting would-be doctors when he testified before Congress that his son is on pace to graduate from medical school with a whopping $400,000 in loans. 

Bernanke's son isn't unusual. The median education debt for 2012 medical school graduates was $170,000 in 2012, compared with $13,469 in 1978, according to Bloomberg, which adds that in today's dollars, the 1978 amount would be $48,000.

The huge cost -- and resulting debt -- of medical school may be dissuading some students from enrolling, the story says. That's coming at a sensitive time for America's health care industry, which is facing a shortage of doctors just as an aging population needs them most. 

 

Obamacare will only bring death for American small businesses, according to Home Depot (HD) co-founder Bernie Marcus. 

In an interview with Newsmax TV at a summit for Job Creators Alliance, a group that advocates for small businesses, Marcus took aim at a wide range of government regulations, including the Environmental Protection Agency and Dodd-Frank. But he reserved his harshest criticism for the Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect next year. 

"Obamacare is going to kill off small business," Marcus said, according to the Huffington Post. "Obamacare is the capper. That's the bullet to the temple."

The ACA is proving to be a lightning rod for business owners. Many object to the provision requiring employers with 50 or more full-time workers (30 hours or more per week) to offer "minimum essential" health care insurance.