This week, federal prosecutors charged four Chinese intelligence officers with hacking into credit-reporting company Equifax in a massive data breach — revealed back in 2017 — that exposed the financial records of roughly half the U.S. population. Equifax agreed to pay $650 million to settle with regulators last year, but as of the January deadline, most customers eligible for compensation hadn’t filed claims.
The hack highlighted some huge vulnerabilities in the operations of a company that handles a vast amount of our most private data. A congressional report in 2018 called the Equifax hack “entirely preventable.” And one lawsuit filed against Equifax last year said the company “employed the username ‘admin’ and the password ‘admin’ to protect a portal used to manage credit disputes.”
“No company should have the absolute right to gather the amount of data about citizens that Equifax does with no way to opt out,” Molly Wood said on this week’s podcast. “They’re essentially the world’s largest data broker, and they have the security of, like, a tent in the backyard.”
School of Architecture at Taliesin
Smart In a Shot
Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture at Taliesin is closing at the end of the school year, this June. With fabled campuses in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Scottsdale, Arizona, Taliesin has long been known for its unconventional “organic architecture” curriculum that included students designing their own residences. In the 88 years since Wright founded the school, more than 1,200 postgraduates have studied there, some of whom worked with the famed architect on projects including Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum.
On Jan. 28, the school and its sister institution, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, announced the planned closing. Reports indicate that the foundation and the school weren’t in agreement on aspects of Taliesin’s operations, from funding to pedagogy and preservation. The 30 students currently attending Taliesin issued a statement a few days later, likening the closure to “the demolition of a physical architectural masterwork.”
In other news from the architecture world, President Donald Trump is considering a plan that could require classical-style architecture as the default for new and upgraded federal buildings. (Might be a good time to brush up on those three classic kinds of columns.)
The Numbers
This week the Congressional Budget Office released a report on student loan forgiveness. Let’s hit the books.
$207.4 billion
That’s the CBO’s estimate of how much student debt the U.S. government will forgive for Americans who take out loans to cover education over the next 10 years. The government will grant a total of $1.05 trillion in loans during that time, the CBO estimates.
43 million
That’s how many Americans have borrowed money from the government for college or graduate school. That number grew a lot after 2010, when the government made loans available to more people with more favorable terms. The total amount of student debt held by Americans as of the end of 2019: $1.51 trillion.
7.8%
That’s how much Trump wants to cut the budget for the Department of Education, according to a proposal released by the White House this week. That includes eliminating a student loan program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which cancels debt for teachers, nurses, social workers and other public sector workers after they’ve made 10 years of payments. (The plan isn't likely to get congressional signoff.)
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
This week on the podcast
Episode 149: No more business as usual
Are Big Business' gestures toward social and economic responsibility something we should take seriously or a canny bit of "woke-washing"? (Listening time, 35:29)
Tell us what’s making you smarter at smarter@marketplace.org. We'd love to include your recommendation in a future newsletter.
La cocina histórica
Marketplace producer Miguel Contreras recommends this online archive of Mexican cookbooks, curated by the University of Texas at San Antonio. For those looking for the most authentic Mexican food, now you can make it yourself.
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Building a growth machine
Listener Jim K. recommends the book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson. The book explores the institutions that drive economic success, from the Roman Empire to Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union and modern-day China.
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Something a little meta
Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal recommends Molly Wood’s latest column in Wired, “We Need to Talk About ‘Cloud Neutrality.’” The piece points out that most of the internet’s physical infrastructure is owned and operated by just a handful of major companies. Kai says, “I think we all need to be ready for the day when Amazon and all the rest of them say, ‘Wellll … it’s our internet now.'”
This Make Me Smart newsletter is written by Erica Phillips.
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