Senate Republicans on Saturday narrowly voted to advance the megabill containing President Donald Trump’s main domestic priorities, including sweeping tax cuts. And included in the bill are major reforms to federal student loan repayment plans and loan forgiveness programs – but with some notable changes. The package cleared an important procedural hurdle on a 51 to 49 vote on Saturday night, with two Republican joining all Democrats to oppose the bill. The narrow success now allows the bill to advance to the Senate floor for a more extended debate, which could culminate in the bill’s passage as soon as Monday.…

“Those are some crazy numbers.” An old friend had messaged me, and that line caught my attention. As it turned out, he had 36 trillion numbers in mind: the national debt, in other words. That is a pretty striking figure, and it’s fair to ask how the country’s debt could go from a trillion dollars back in 1981 to 36 times that today. “Very irresponsible, imo,” my friend wrote. This sounds like a reasonable response, and many people think this way. But the problem here, from an investment perspective, is that most people look at the debt on its own,…