| Class of 2014, welcome to adulthood. You now owe your share of America's $1.1 trillion in outstanding student debt. That's up 361% since 2003. The average debt load per student twenty years ago was half of today's $30,000, after adjusting for inflation. "In the past," Neil Irwin writes, "it was easy to ignore the role that student borrowing might play in the overall economy". That's no longer the case. While student loans may only be one-eighth the value of outstanding mortgage debt, student debt "is highly concentrated among a small slice of people — those in their 20s and 30s — who are the engines of a great deal of economic activity", Irwin says. Loads of student debt, on top of stagnant wages, is a pretty good way to stall household formation. Danny Vinik points out that, "only one-third of all millennials head their own household, a nearly 40-year low". Getting your own place is a huge boost to the economy. It "adds about $145,000 to output that year as the spending ripples through the economy", according to Catherine Rampell, who cites Moody's data. The NY Fed says the portion of 27-30 year-olds with mortgages has fallen to 22%, from 30% in 2008. Matt Zeitlin highlights a post-recession change in the data: "Before the recession, 30-year-olds with some student debt were more likely to own a home than those without... Since then, the pattern has been reversed". Derek Thompson thinks there's something else entirely going on: the divide in the housing market isn't about student debt at all. Instead, there's one market for housing loans to "corporations, who are buying at a historic rate; and one market for families, which is still quite sick". The sort of good news is that the awful job market for recent college grads is getting slightly less bad. The unemployment rate for last year's college graduates fell to 10.9% in April, from 13.3% in 2012. That's still higher than the national rate of 6.3%, but it's the lowest it has been since before the crisis. Jordan Weissman details what he calls Elizabeth Warren's "smart, flawed, and obviously doomed student debt bill" seeking to lower borrowers' rates. The bill is flawed, says Weissman, in its treatment of private lenders, and because it exists primarily as a piece of legislative trolling. Quartz's Matt Phillips points to another idea: income-based repayment, which is already available for under some federal loan programs. Broadening the program to student debt guaranteed by the government, he says, is "important, radically sensible and long-overdue". The market — or at least some hedge funds — seem to think something interesting is going on. They're piling into the student loan asset backed securities market. It not clear whether these funds think student loans are a great value, or the next crisis waiting to happen. — Ben Walsh On to today's links: Easing Ain't Easy
We still don't know if QE works - Atlanta Fed Politicking
The GMO debate: corporate interests vs unscientific fearmongering - Molly Ball Innovations
An advance in shirt pins (and growing human prosperity) - Cafe Hayek Our Dystopian Future
The frightening tyranny that would be Glass in the workplace - The Baffler Mild Rebukes
Larry Summers on Piketty: the data is great, the forecast isn't - Democracy Journal Quotable
"'I don't know what money means anymore,' said an art dealer as he exited halfway through the auction" - Bloomberg Epistles
"If you have to use someone else's authority to get a point across, there is little merit to the point" - Jack Dorsey Possibly Useless Data
"Some 59% of bankers said their colleagues dressed less smartly than in 2009" - Financial Times | 
