You can think of a B.A. as being the product. The speculators are the people who believe that they will make money if they invest in getting the product.

But now, tens of thousands (or more?) of people with the product are unemployed or discovering that their B.A. is, well, underwater. They watch their loans balloon because they can't even pay all the monthly interest on them. But this particular bubble can't burst the way that the housing and dot.com bubbles burst, because student investment debt follows people (and often, their parents) in perpetuity. They can't walk away from loans the way you can walk away from your drowned mortgage. They can't declare bankruptcy, plant the tulips, and call it a day.

This is where I am also not really sure about what's going to happen.