Demand for its product has never been stronger, yet SLM Corp. (22, SLM) , the leading student lender, has tumbled 65% since last July and is not far off its 52-week low of $15. Sallie Mae (nyse: SLM - news - people ), as the firm is known, funds college loans by selling them as interest-bearing securities (current value outstanding: $170 billion).
After fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis began hurting other securitized products last year, Sallie’s funding costs for government-guaranteed loans jumped–from 0.2 percentage points to 1.5 percentage points above the London Interbank Offered Rate. That pushed the firm into a $104 million net loss in the first quarter, versus a $116 million profit a year earlier.
Skittish investors are mistakenly overlooking the fact that Sallie’s “core” earnings, which exclude the effects of marking volatile derivatives to market, were down only 7%, to $225 million, says Sameer Gokhale, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. What’s more, demand for Sallie’s product is strong, with the firm having originated $8.7 billion in student loans in the first quarter.
Sallie also may enjoy a boost from legislation in the works that’s aimed at providing government funding for student loans until the securitization market recovers. Says Gokhale: “The irony is that Sallie Mae should be a defensive stock. This is one of the best businesses around, assuming funding costs normalize.” Another believer is hedge fund mogul Edward Lampert, whose ESL Investments recently bought 6 million shares.
Sebastian Faulks’ rollicking new Bond story brings back that old Ian Fleming feeling. It’s a good day to be a Bond fan.

forbes.com

Marissa Kimball used to go out with her friends and shop all the time.
But rising gas prices are changing that for Kimball and other teens and young adults as buying gas takes a big chunk out of their limited incomes.
“I really don’t go shopping with my friends anymore. I hang out with them, but I just can’t buy anything because most of my money goes to gas these days,” said Kimball, 18, a student at UMass-Dartmouth.
A May 2008 poll from Junior Achievement shows that rising prices at the pump have caught up with teens. Gas is now the top item teens buy with credit cards, surpassing clothes.
From shorter shopping excursions to fewer trips home for college students to carpooling with other teens to get to work, young adults are looking for ways to economize on travel expenses.
“I can’t even take my girlfriend out on a date too much anymore because gas is so expensive,” said Dave Cutler, a sophomore at Bridgewater State College.
With gas prices heading toward $4 a gallon in Massachusetts, the cost of driving a car is a challenge that high school seniors looking ahead to college will face in the coming months.
Many young adults are spending a good portion of their paychecks just on gas.
If they earn the Massachusetts minimum wage of $8 an hour, they are spending close to half of that hour’s wage for one gallon of gas.
“Usually, I spend somewhere around $50 to $70 dollars sometimes a week on gas,” said Natalie Hughes, a student at Bridgewater State. “That basically is more than half of my paycheck sometimes.”
Jeff Crehan, who attends Stonehill College in Easton, said most of his money goes to gas.
“Gas is basically what I spend most of my money on. It cost so much just to fill up a whole tank, and I live in Connecticut, so I do that often when I go home,” Crehan said.

enterprisenews.com

The Mattin Center throws itself a pARTy this week to celebrate students’ creative endeavors. The event — hosted by Homewood Arts Programs, theDigital Media Center and Homewood Art Workshops — will include musical and theatrical performances and exhibits of visual and digital arts, which will bepresented throughout the center. Between 4 and 5:30 p.m., students in the Program in Museums and Society will have a drop-in poster presentation addressing the topic ‘Who Owns Culture?’ Above, Tom Chalkley draws caricatures at a previous pARTy. See Special Events.
Photo by Will Kirk / HIPS
Wed., May 7, 4:30 p.m. “Internal Inonizable Groups in Proteins: The Structural Motif That Makes LifePossible,” a Biology colloquium with Bertrand Garcia-Moreno, KSAS. Mudd Auditorium. HW
Fri., May 9, 2 p.m. “Public Safety Wireless Broadband,” an Applied Physics Laboratory colloquium withKenneth Budka, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent. Parsons Auditorium. APL
Wed., May 7, 4 p.m. “Lessons They Don’t Teach You in School: Reflections on the Art, Sciences andthe Politics of Public Health Decision Making,” General Preventive Medicine Residency Program grandrounds with Thomas Burke, SPH. Co-sponsored by the DrPH Student Network. W1214 SPH (SheldonHall). EB
Mon., May 5, 4 p.m. The Carlson Lecture — “Single Molecule Mechanics, Tension Sensing and the MyosinFamily of Molecular Motors” by James Spudich, Stanford University. Sponsored by Biophysics. 26Mudd. HW
Tues., May 6, 4 p.m. The 13th Philip Bard Lecture — “Adiponectin and the Regulation of Fatty Acid andGlucose Metabolism” by Harvey Lodish, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Sponsored byPhysiology. WBSB Auditorium. EB
Mon., May 5, 5:30 p.m. JHMI Choral Society annual spring concert, a program of part-songs byBrahms, Thompson, Foster and Stanford, with a special performance by the JHMI Chamber MusicSociety. Hurd Hall. EB

jhu.edu

“I think he went a little overboard,” four-time series champion Jeff Gordon said. “He kind of made it personal.”
Gordon, Greg Biffle and Ryan Newman tested tires for Goodyear at the newly paved Darlington Raceway on Monday, and all agreed the rubber at Atlanta wasn’t favorable for driving conditions.
But none was as angry as Stewart, who said Goodyear gave him “the most pathetic racing tire I’ve ever been on in my professional career.”
“If I were Goodyear, I would really be embarrassed about what they brought here,” Stewart said. “I guarantee you Hoosier or Firestone or somebody can come in and do a better job than they are right now.”
The tire company issued a statement defending its Atlanta product, while promising to retest the rubber before the series returns to the track in October.
Gordon said he spoke with Stewart, the two-time champion, before Sunday’s Cup race, and “could tell he was pretty wound up about it.”
“We were all pretty out-of-control out there,” Gordon said after Sunday’s race. “I don’t disagree with him as far as the comfort level in the situation we were in.”
“The tire thing is a little blown out of proportion,” Newman said. “There’s a lot of things he said that were true. Obviously, he took it to another level. That’s Tony.”

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