University officials said it would be up to the campuses to work out how students would be selected and whether they would have a choice which track to take, but all would get credit.

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"It's a whole new skill set to develop: to convince people to actually take out their credit card, even for one cent, " said Robert Kyncl, YouTube's vice president and global head of content partnerships, told reporters at the March event.

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Much in the same conceptual way as bad debt is repackaged as an attractive investment at scale ( remember how that turned out?), a terminally credit-fueled economic culture allows us to routinely take on debt based on our fears and to feel that we are spending what we have borrowed on chasing our hopes.

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What started out as a simple error was compounded when the recipients decided to take the extra step and turn it into credit fraud.

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Can I just say, we just went through a decade where we were told that it didn't matter, we'll just -- you just keep on importing, buying stuff from other countries, you just take out a home equity loan and max out your credit card, and everything is going to be okay.

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