The uprisings in Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen all started last spring. They've all resulted in regime change — except for the uprising in Syria.

Why is Syria locked in a brutal and seemingly endless conflict? The answer has to do with history, politics, and a growing class of entrepreneurs who are struggling to pick a side. Their decision could turn the tide of the conflict. It could also cost them their lives.

For More, see Adam Davidson's New York Times column, The Syria Paradox.

Music: Beirut's "Nantes." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr.

Here are two ways to think about the price of college tuition:

1. Sticker price is the full price colleges list in their brochures and on their websites.

2. Net price is the price students actually pay. Net price accounts for the fact that many students receive grants or scholarships. So it can be considerably lower than sticker price.

Quick example. Say you go to a school where the sticker price is $25,000 a year. You get a $10,000-a-year grant. The net price for you — the part you have to pay for through loans, work and family contributions — is $15,000 a year.

Here's the average sticker price and average net price for tuition and fees at public and private colleges in the U.S. over the past 15 years:

 

The sticker price has gone way up (no surprise). But, because the value of grants and scholarships has also grown, average net price has grown much more slowly. In fact, in the past five years, average net price at private colleges has actually fallen.

Of course, these are just averages, and there's huge variation. To figure out what the net price would be for you at a given college, you can use a tool called the "net price calculator."

As we noted recently, all colleges are now required to post a net price calculator on their website.

The calculator asks a series of questions about the student and the family's financial situation. At the end, you get a page that shows the school's sticker price, the scholarships and grants you'd be likely to qualify for, and the net price you'd be likely to pay.

The calculator provides only a rough estimate. But it can be a helpful way to focus less on sticker price and more on a price that's closer to what you'd actually pay.

More From Planet Money:

• The Real Price Of College
• How Colleges Fight For Top Students
• What America Owes In Student Loans

Note: The graphic is based on data in a College Board report called Trends in College Pricing (PDF), an excellent source for big-picture data on college prices.

David Unkovic tried to save Harrisburg, the broke capital city of Pennsylvania.

He was Harrisburg's receiver, which means he was appointed to take charge of the city's very troubled finances.

But his plan to save the city ran into political trouble, and Unkovic abruptly fled Harrisburg, leaving nothing but a scrawled, handwritten note. "I find myself in an untenable position in the political and ethical crosswinds," the letter said, "and am no longer in a position to effectuate a solution."

He has pretty much stayed out of sight since. Until today.

Today, Harrisburg got a new receiver to run the city finances: Air Force Major General William B. Lynch. The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania called Unkovic in for the appointment. Unkovic showed up in his traditional bow tie. His remarks were limited but intense, as is his style.

The city's creditors were "trying to put [him] in a box" so he could no longer do his job, Unkovic said today, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Unkovic also intimated today that he'd been told he was going to be fired by the state. By the end of his time as receiver, Unkovic flew off the handle in a few press conferences. He called the city "a house of cards," and the next day, named names of people who'd been involved in the financing of the incinerator that got the city into trouble. Among others, he named a former lobbyist, a state senator, and the former mayor of Harrisburg. State officials deny they told Unkovic he was going to be fired.

Sadly for those reporters who are fascinated by Unkovic's struggle and disappearance, he would not speak to the press today.

"Finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro agreed earlier this week on the need to develop national contingency plans in case Greece drops out of the common currency, officials said." - WSJ

This is awkward, because you're really not supposed to talk about this sort of thing out loud. You're supposed to say, as Angela Merkel said again this week, "We want Greece to remain in the eurozone."

But what if? What if you were a eurozone finance minister and your job right now was to protect your financial system in case of a Greek exit?

   

1. Add up how much money your country's businesses have on the line in Greece.

Not just Greek government bonds, but also stock in Greek companies, loans to Greek businesses and IOUs from Greek importers. Some of these assets would immediately be re-denominated in drachma, which would result in losses.

2. Call your lawyers in London.

Under the recent debt deal, some Greek national debt is now subject to UK law. That means that even if Greece goes back to the drachma, this debt will still be due in euros — and you'll need British lawyers to make sure that you get your money.

3. Get cozy with the European Central Bank.

You will want help from the European Central Bank, especially if you're one of Europe's troubled peripheral countries (Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy).

Here's how you get the ECB on your side: Stand up and make a big speech saying how much you love the austerity program, how you're on target to hit your austerity goals, and how safe your banks are. That should convince the ECB to turn on the faucet and shower your country with easy loans.

If all goes well, that should be enough to keep bank deposits in your country, enable your banks to keep lending money to your government, and keep your economy afloat — for now, anyway.

The Northern Mariana Islands are about 4,000 miles west of Hawaii. They look like the kind of tropical islands you see in the movies with bright blue water and white sand beaches.

The people who live on the islands are American. The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a U.S. territory. And just like a lot of U.S. states, the commonwealth has a pension plan for its government employees.

Sixto Igisomar used to run it.

"We always say that the CNMI pension plan is the best pension plan within the United States because the benefits were very good, " Sixto says.

They used to say that. Last month, the pension fund became the first public pension fund in the U.S. to seek bankruptcy protection.

 

How did the fund get into trouble? Part of the problem, according to Igisomar: The benefits were very good.

The pension fund pays benefits to an employee's spouse and children long after the employee has died. Adopted children were included, so many government retirees adopted their own grandchildren so that they could receive benefits.

Ruth Tighe is former employee of the commonwealth's energy office. She says the law that allowed her to retire with so little government service should never have been passed.

"At the time when I retired there was a law on the books that said you only had to work for 3 years, " says Tighe. "And if you worked for the government for 3 years, you could retire and start collecting your pension at age 62."

In the mid 2000's the economy of the islands started to collapse. Large garment factories left the islands and the government's tax revenue started to dwindle. As a result, the government started paying less and less into the pension fund. In 2006 and 2007, the government suspended its payments into the fund.

That left Igisomar in a bind — he couldn't get more money from the government and by law he couldn't change the amount of money he had to give out.

"The pension plan was placed into the constitution. There is no way you can change it. There is no way you can amend it. There is no way you can just stop it, " Igisomar says.

The fund started to consider bankruptcy. In bankruptcy, pension officials would be able able to negotiate with the retirees and try to get them to accept less money.

The case is in front of a judge right now, and a central question in the case has ramifications for states and state employees all across the mainland: Is a pension fund separate from the government or part of it?

Under U.S bankruptcy law, commonwealths and states cannot file for bankruptcy, according to David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The pension fund is arguing that it works for the commonwealth of the Northern Mariana islands but it is not part of it.

"They need to show separateness," says Skeel. "They need to show they are not just a branch of the commonwealth but they really are a separate entity."

Skeel says pension funds all across this country are likely watching this case to see what the court decides.

"If this case ends up concluding that a pension fund can file for bankruptcy, I think we will have some pension funds thinking about it and at least considering taking that plunge, says Skeel.

After all, there are a lot state pension funds that are in facing financial troubles similar to these tiny islands. They have promised a lot to their retirees but it's unclear whether they will be able to keep those promises.

DALTON, Mass. – If you were driving through this small town along the Housatonic River in the Berkshires, here's something you might not think about: All the bills in your wallet are visiting their birthplace.

The paper for U.S. currency, the substrate of everyday commerce, has been made here since 1879 by the Crane family.

Crane & Co. vice president Doug Crane represents the eighth generation descended from Stephen Crane, who was making paper before the American Revolution.

He gave NPR reporters a behind-the-scenes tour and talked about his company.

 

Crane & Co.'s heritage predates the industrial age and faces an uncertain future as the digital era unfolds.

Amid all that, the unmistakable impression is that the business practices a peculiar alchemy that's unduplicated in American manufacturing.

As keeper of perhaps the ultimate secret recipe, the company carries the institutional memory of those who've made the paper for paper money since Thomas Edison was fiddling in his lab.

Crane seems ever aware that the sweep of history of the nation's money is, to him, personal.

He recalls an early lesson he got about the quality of his family's product, as a seven year old walking on the beach.

"I see this ten-dollar bill just flapping in the breeze out from underneath some seaweed. Someone had dropped this thing out in the ocean somewhere," Crane says.

"I picked it up, it dried off and it was in perfectly good shape."

Ordinary wood-pulp paper, of course, wouldn't have looked so good on the beach.

Crane tells us that currency paper is made of more durable linen and cotton fibers. So, a toss in the ocean is nothing compared to the torture it endures here in Dalton.

When NPR visited, the company was preparing tons of dull-brown linen fibers to be an ingredient in the paper.

One of the first things we see is a giant iron ball swinging from the rafters.

If you're at all familiar with the term "steampunk," you'll easily call it to mind.

"It's pretty crazy looking," Crane tells us.

Inside the big ball, the linen is cooked under pressure. Call it a kind of parboiling of the money molecules.

"It's about 15 feet in diameter and will hold several thousand pounds of fiber at a time," Crane says as the sphere, called a rotary digester, rocks high above us.

We follow the fibers through a network of baths and presses. They're bleached and processed until they land in what Crane calls a "slurry" with cotton fibers.

Then, machines press it into a continuous stream of paper that flows through the factory. When light shines through the paper, which today is for $20 bills, you can see watermarked images of Andrew Jackson.

If you look closely, you can see tiny red and blue security threads Crane showed us in baggies, but couldn't talk about much.

Crane poses for a photo in front of the paper as it spins on a large spool. He strokes it and smiles as the Jacksons go by.

The roll will ultimately get cut into smaller rolls, then sheets. From there the paper is piled onto pallets and trucked by armored tractor-trailer to Bureau of Engraving and Printing sites where money is printed.

Crane & Co. have had the contract for making US currency paper for over 130 years, and today they're basically the only game in town. The Government Accountability Office published a report in 1998 titled "Meaningful Competition Unlikely Under Current Conditions."

A few years later, the GAO said the government should try continue to look into getting a second supplier.

Doug Crane says the U.S. government audits the company's books every four years when the contract is up for renewal to make sure it's getting a fair price.

As NPR has reported, Crane is involved in a lobbying effort against bills in Congress to eliminate one-dollar bills and replace them with coins.

But, there's a larger issue: The fate of all paper money.

U.S. currency paper is 40 percent of his company's business, and Crane is an articulate spokesman for the convenience and efficiency of cash.

Still, as the digital age begins a restless adolescence, cash is no longer quite the economic sine qua non it once was.

Smart phones, along with debit and prepaid cards, have been getting more popular as a way to pay for things.

With some degree of understatement, Crane says he finds the issue interesting. If he's worried, you wouldn't know it.

He says he's not sure if cash's relevance will devolve, following the course of newspapers, film cameras and hard-wired telephones.

Still, he maintains that cash will continue to be a "significant fraction" of transactions for decades to come.

"Fifty years from now, will there be cash? Yeah, I'm sure there will be. Will there be a lot of it? I really couldn't tell you. Ask me in 40 years."

Of cash, he says, "It's not glitzy, it doesn't have electrons flying all over the place, but it's something you can rely on."

Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital is back in the news this week. We did two stories earlier this year on deals Bain did while Romney was running the firm — one of those deals went badly, the other one worked out well. Here are excerpts, and links to the full stories.

 

How Mitt Romney's Firm Tried — And Failed — To Build A Paper Empire

When you buy a house, you put down a bit of your own money. But typically you borrow most of the money. That's what Bain did in 1992, when it bought American Pad and Paper: $5 million down, $35 million in bank debt.

"We were highly leveraged as a company," says Russell Gard, the guy who Bain brought in to run the company. "Like, squeaky leveraged. We were tight." ...

Jerry Rayburn, who worked on the factory floor at SCM, remembers the day when Bain took over. "We knew something was going on when, toward the end of the day, we saw all the security guards starting to surround the plant," he says.

Then employees were told the company had been acquired by Ampad, and they had all been terminated. They were told they were welcome to re-apply for their own jobs.

"You could hear a pin drop," Rayburn says. "Everybody was in shock."

Most people did reapply, but things were different. The union was over. Lots of employees took a pay cut. Plant rules were different. The workers went on strike. ...

***

How Mitt Romney's Firm Transformed A Struggling Company, In 5 Steps

Step 1: Find a little company that's lost inside a big company.

In 1995, Wesley Jessen was a struggling division of Schering Plough, a big drug company. "We were not a very profitable company at all," says Bill Flynn, who worked in Wesley Jessen's finance division at the time. ...

Bain saw potential in the company. So they came in and bought it. Like most private equity deals, it was done mostly with borrowed money. Bain put $6.5 million down, and borrowed another $43 million.

Now, they had to pay interest on all that debt, while turning the company around. The key to doing so:

Step 2: Hire the right leader.

Bain brought in a guy named Kevin Ryan to run Wesley Jessen. He's widely admired as a smart, charismatic, hard-working exec. ...

For More: Listen to our podcast, What Do Private Equity Firms Actually Do?

On today's show, we follow a couple guys who run a pizza shop in New Orleans as they buy their first Facebook ad. We visit a business in New Jersey that sells Facebook "likes" in bulk. And we check in with a business school professor who explains what Facebook would have to do to live up to its valuation — which, even after its post-IPO fall, is still roughly $90 billion.

For More, see our stories from last week:

* Is Facebook Worth $100 Billion?

* Pizza Delicious Bought An Ad On Facebook. How'd It Do?

* For $75, This Guy Will Sell You 1,000 Facebook 'Likes'

Subscribe. Music: Massive Attack's "Atlas Air" and One Direction's "One Thing." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr.

Toxie, Planet Money's toxic asset, has a new home. She used to sit in my desk drawer — 300 some worn pages, marked with post-its. But a few weeks ago, a curator from the Museum of the City of New York came to take custody of her. She's now on display as part of an exhibit about banking in New York.

I went to the opening last night. She was in a proper display case befitting an artifact of the financial crisis. The plaque read "Prospectus for Harbor View Mortgage Loan Trust 2005-10, CUSIP #41161PUA9, or "Toxie," issued 2005.

If you're in town, the exhibit runs through October 21^st.

This week in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes about the surprising diversity of Syria's economy. There are pockets of affluence in the cities, a budding private sector, and even a few American franchises.

There is also a government official who embodies everything that's wrong with Syria's economy. His name is Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. His nickname is "Mr. Ten Percent," because he knows how to get a cut of any business deal in Syria.

Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, explained how it works. In 2000, Bashar al-Assad passed a series of economic reforms which allowed entrepreneurs without government connections to open their own businesses. But there was a catch. If the business didn't pay a cut to corrupt officials, "they could punch you in a hundred different ways," said Landis. "They could force you to sell, tax you, or revoke your permission to change the sewage or electric lines."

Ultimately, Landis says, the reforms created a class of crony capitalists, angering the independent merchants who hoped that they might mark a turning point in Syria's economy. So why hasn't Syria's business class turned against the regime? Read the full column to find out.

"It's an un-obvious chunk of meat that has been sitting there — a little diamond surrounded by a bunch of coal," Steve Price told me. "I'd love to tell you more. We just can't."

Price works at Oklahoma State University. The school says it has worked with an outside meat expert to discover a new steak. It's hiding somewhere inside a part of a cow that's now commonly used for hamburger.

The steak has a name — the Vegas Strip Steak (TM) — and a marketing campaign. But, because OSU is still waiting on its patent, they are being cagey about the details. Price explained it to me in broad strokes.

 

"The patent actually claims the kind of knife strokes that you make in order to create this cut of meat," he said. "You take this muscle, you make cuts here, here and here and you end up with this Vegas Strip Steak."

There does seem to be a precedent for this sort of thing. One guy patented cuts of meat that became Steak-Umm and KFC's popcorn chicken.

Price hopes the Vegas Strip will take off by the end of the year. The basic idea is to get restaurant chains interested in the steak, and to work with big packing plants to sell the steak to the restaurants. OSU would charge a licensing fee to the packing plant.

Should I expect to see the steak at the grocery store sometime soon?

No, Price said.

Why not?

"If i told you, it would be a hint to where this muscle is," he said. "A knowledgeable person would say, 'Aha!'"

More on Patents: When Patents Attack!

via Gizmodo

This week in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson writes about companies that spend a fortune on marketing to signal to shoppers that they have money to burn. We asked Nancy Koehn, a retail historian at Harvard, to explain where this practice came from and why it's here to stay.

The idea of signaling is not brand new. Companies have been signaling for decades, centuries even, using enticing packaging and pricey celebrity endorsements to showcase something special about their brand.

More than 200 years ago, long before the term "branding" had entered the business lexicon, British entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood used signaling to set his china apart from competitors' goods. In 1765, for example, Wedgwood produced a cream-colored tea set for King George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, which resulted in his appointment as "Potter to her Majesty."

 

His creamware quickly became known as Queensware, signaling its elegance and aspirational qualities. Wedgwood moved swiftly to capitalize on the power of celebrity endorsement, advertising aristocratic sales in London newspapers and naming specific pieces for individual members of the nobility (Duchess of Devonshire flowerpots, anyone?).

In an era of rising incomes and increased social mobility, the imaginative entrepreneur took great care to ensure customers saw Wedgwood products not as "everyday china," but rather as pieces of aristocratic fashion and quality that they could bring into their own homes and for which they were willing to pay more.

Today, the name Wedgwood is still associated with fine china. The company has historically sold its goods at higher prices than competitors and generally avoided discounting, effectively signaling the superiority of their products and brand to consumers. Customers who buy Wedgwood china aren't just paying for a product; they are buying the esteem associated with a prestigious brand.

Ironically, in an age when – with just a few mouse clicks – anyone can find almost any product at the lowest price, signaling, including product presentation, has only become more important.

Apple is one of the most recognizable modern brands profiting from signaling. Here is a company that squeezes every last penny out of its supply chain but splurges on heavy cardboard boxes for its phones and sturdy plastic cases for its iPods. Apple spends more on presentation than is functionally necessary to ensure customers understand they're about to open something sleek, beautiful and special.

For their part, consumers have long used aspirational brands to send their own messages about their place in society. Consider the people queuing up outside Apple stores to buy the iPhone 4S. Owning the latest Apple smartphone tells the larger world that a given consumer not only has the power of cutting-edge technology at his fingertips; because he chose Apple, he also has the potential to travel the brand's imputed highway of personal possibility.

The more that choice proliferates on the Internet, the more powerful signaling is becoming on both the supply and demand sides of the economy.

When Bart Chilton was 13, he played piano in a band called Shades. The band members always wore sunglasses. They played mostly in Chilton's living room.

Today, Chilton says, he plays a little piano, a little guitar and a little harp, by which he means harmonica. He has a day job as a commissioner of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

The CFTC is the federal regulator for derivatives, which makes Chilton responsible for overseeing one of the most complex and important corners of modern finance.

Chilton has a habit of sprinkling his speeches with references to popular music. It can be a bit jarring to see a reference to, say, Tom Petty, in a speech called "Statement by Commissioner Bart Chilton Regarding Anti-Fraud and Anti-Manipulation Final Rules":

 

There is an old Tom Petty song, "The Waiting" in which he sings, "The waiting is the hardest part," and later "Don't let it get to you." Well, I'm trying not to let it get to me and very pleased that today we are moving forward and we may not have to wait any longer.

And there's this, from a speech earlier this month:

The thing is: in order to reach an agreement, to reach that balance, sometimes it is sort of like that old Rhinestone Cowboy lyric, "There'll be a load of compromisin' on the road to my horizon." For those of you who were too young, or don't recall the song, made famous by country singer Glen Campbell, it is your loss. It was a huge hit. By the way, I saw a neat tee shirt last weekend. On it was written, "I'm old, but I got to see all the cool bands."

Chilton has worked in government for most of his adult life. I called him the other day to ask him about all the music in his speeches.

"A lot of times people just think [derivatives] are so scary complicated," he told me. "I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what's going on. What's better than references to popular culture?"

Other Chilton speeches have included allusions to the Dixie Chicks, the Beatles, and (whisper it softly) Dave Matthews.

Which leaves, to account for, the hair.

Is it a mullet?

"I hope not, though sometimes it's been referred to as that," he said. "The guy who cuts my hair doesn't think so. When I told him that one time, he sort of shivered."

Ok. But still. It's sort of a rock-and-roll cut.

"It's definitely longer than the buzz cut you see most of the time in the federal government," he allowed. "I would pale in comparison to rock and rollers with my haircut. I would be a lightweight."

Ashley Dias is 26 years old. She has cystic fibrosis. About six weeks ago, her lungs gave out. She was rushed to the Cleveland Clinic and told she'd need a lung transplant to survive.

Lungs are a scarce resource. But unlike many scarce resources, lungs aren't for sale. So doctors have had to develop a system to allocate them.

Ashley's life depends on that system.

Subscribe. Music: Florence + The Machine's "Heartlines." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr.

Mark Zuckerberg is, among many other things, the highest-profile taxpayer on the planet today.

After today's Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg will owe nearly $200 million in California state taxes alone. That's "among the largest tax liabilities that a single individual has ever paid at a given point in time," says Jason Sisney of the California State Budget Legislative Analyst's Office.

Zuckerberg's profits will be taxed at a 10% rate in California. That's a much higher rate than in many other states.

In all, Facebook's employees and early investors are expected to pay about $2 billion in California state taxes over the next 13 months. But California is almost 16 billion dollars in the hole. Facebook won't solve that problem.