The troubled Facebook IPO is casting a pall over high tech (wrongly, I think). The signal moment for the emergence of an even larger digital economy wasn't Facebook. It was Apple's iPad. It's the visible symbol of the rapid embrace of wireless data — video, images, content, data and communication — throughout the global economy. A safe forecast: The mobile Internet will transform personal finance.

College dropouts don’t get the job, earnings and career benefits of postsecondary education, but they do get a student loan repayment book.