The bottom line

A profit for the Department of Education

The Congressional Budget Office says the Department of Education is expected to make a record $51 billion profit from student loans this year. That’s more than the profits of companies like Exxon Mobil and Apple, and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks.

HuffingtonPost.com

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Is the poverty threshold too low?

Americans think a family of four needs an annual minimum of $58,000 “just to get by,” according to a new Gallup poll. That’s twice the 2012 poverty threshold for a family of four, which was about $24,000 a year.

CNBC.com

Good times for luxury-goods companies

Luxury-goods companies are soaring in value, thanks largely to emerging markets. Prada’s value surged the most last year, rising 63 percent over 2012 thanks to Asian tourist sales.

The Economist

Gen Xers and the financial crisis

Members of Generation X—those now in their late 30s to late 40s—lost a greater share of their net worth during the financial crisis than older Americans. They’re also less likely to recoup it. While Boomers look set to replace 82 percent of their lost income, Gen Xers are on track to replace just half of their pre-retirement income if they stop working at 65.

The Wall Street Journal

Beauties get more visas than geeks

Fashion models are twice as likely as computer programmers to get their applications for H-1B visas approved. In 2010, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved more than half of the 478 applications it received for fashion-model visas, but granted just under 28 percent of H-1B visa requests for computer-related occupations.

Bloomberg.com