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The Student Loan Marketing Association was created by the U.S. government in 1972 as a government-sponsored enterprise that bought student loans from local banks so they could keep lending. Albert Lord joined in 1981, became CEO in 1995 and led the push out of the federal charter, a process that began in 1997 and ended when Congress terminated the charter at the end of 2004. Along the way SLM Corporation bought Nellie Mae, a Massachusetts-created secondary market lender, for $320 million in 1999, gave the maximum $250,000 to President George W. Bush's second inauguration in 2005, and acquired the Upromise college rebate program in 2006.

In April 2007 an investor group led by J.C. Flowers, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, agreed to buy the company for about $25 billion, then backed out by September as credit markets tightened. Sallie Mae sued, then dropped the suit in January 2008 after securing $31 billion in financing, part of it from Bank of America. The federal government bought back loans later in 2008, and 2010 legislation moved federal student lending to direct government loans. Sallie Mae cut 2,500 jobs, moved its headquarters from Reston, Virginia, to Newark, Delaware, and in 2014 split off Navient to handle federal loan servicing while SLM kept private loans and banking.

• A 2009 false claims suit by former Education Department researcher Dr. Oberg alleged overbilling the government through a 9.5% guaranteed return loophole.
• In 2006 Elizabeth Warren questioned on 60 Minutes whether one company should both originate student debt and collect it.
• A 2007 investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into lending practices ended in a $2 million settlement.
• A Connecticut class action alleging higher rates for Black and Hispanic borrowers settled in 2011 with a $500,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund.
• A former employee's suit claiming borrowers were pushed into forbearance was dismissed after he was arrested for extortion in an unrelated matter.

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SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, holds no money and settles no payments: it is a secure messaging network that tells banks where funds should move. It grew out of the Nixon shock of 1971, when floating exchange rates made slow, manually typed Telex messages costly, and out of fears that First National Citibank's proprietary system would become the default. In 1973, 239 banks from 15 countries formed a cooperative based in Belgium, and Prince Albert of Belgium sent the first ceremonial message in 1977. Its ISO 9362 codes identify the bank, country, city and branch, and by 2015 the network carried 32 million messages a day for more than 11,000 institutions in over 200 countries.

After the September 11 attacks, the CIA and the U.S. Treasury tapped SWIFT data through the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, and the 2013 Snowden leaks showed the NSA reading bank printer traffic. SWIFT split its data storage into European and transatlantic zones in 2009, and the European Parliament rejected a U.S. data sharing agreement in 2010. On EU orders it disconnected sanctioned Iranian banks in 2012, refused 2014 demands to cut off Israeli banks and Russia, and in 2022 removed select Russian and Belarusian banks. Those cutoffs spurred rival systems, including China's CIPS, Russia's SPFS, India's SFMS, Brazil's Pix and the planned BRICS Pay.

• In 2016 hackers took $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank and used malware to alter Alliance Access print logs so paper reports showed normal balances.
• In Ecuador, Banco del Austro sued Wells Fargo over $12 million stolen by thieves using an employee's legitimate SWIFT login.
• Slow international wires come from hops through correspondent banks, each running its own compliance checks and legacy software.
• Aleph Bank in Tajikistan had to upgrade its entire core banking system before it could adopt SWIFT Go.
• INSTEX, the EU vehicle built to keep trading with Iran despite U.S. sanctions, was liquidated in 2023.

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Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung created Hyundai Electronics in 1983, expecting cars to become computers on wheels. It first tried SRAM, which needs four to six transistors per bit, and its yields were poor. A 1985 switch to DRAM using designs imported from Vitelic also failed in mass production, so Hyundai worked as a contract foundry for Texas Instruments and General Instruments, learned clean-room production, and became the world's ninth largest DRAM maker by 1992. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the South Korean government pressed Hyundai and LG to combine their chip units, and Hyundai Electronics bought LG Semicon for $2.1 billion in 1998.

When memory prices fell 80% in 2001, the business lost 5 trillion won and was rescued by creditor banks led by the Korea Development Bank. Renamed Hynix, it sold its phone, CDMA chip, car navigation and LCD units and was spun off from the Hyundai Group in August 2003. Sale attempts in 2009 and 2011 failed until SK Telecom bought it for $3 billion in February 2012. SK Hynix bought Intel's NAND flash business for $9 billion in 2021, forming Solidigm, began mass producing the first 12-layer high bandwidth memory in September 2024 and supplied Nvidia. On June 22, 2026, it passed Samsung Electronics in common-share market value, ending a reign of 25 years and seven months.

• In 2026 SK Hynix set aside 10% of an expected $169 billion annual profit for bonuses, about $500,000 per employee.
• Faulty SK Hynix flash chips in some Nintendo Wii U consoles corrupted data when the console stayed unplugged too long.
• Its first-quarter 2026 operating profit of $25 billion matched its total revenue for 2022.
• With 38% of the global DRAM market in mid-2025, its shift to AI memory contributed to a shortage of ordinary RAM.
• In July 2026 it raised $26.5 billion by listing American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq and agreed to buy Intel's Ohio fab site.

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Mattel's name joins Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler and leaves out Ruth Handler, who ran the business. The three started Mattel Creations in a Los Angeles garage in January 1945 making picture frames from Lucite and scrap wood, and Ruth turned the scraps into dollhouse furniture that soon outsold the frames. When Matson's health failed in 1946, the Handlers bought his share and Ruth took charge of the business side. The Uke-A-Doodle followed in 1947, the company incorporated in Hawthorne, California, in 1948, and it later signed a $500,000 contract to sponsor The Mickey Mouse Club before the show aired, marketing toys directly to children.

Barbie, inspired by Ruth watching her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, met skeptical male buyers at the 1959 Toy Fair but sold through TV ads that framed her as a teenage fashion model; Ken arrived in 1961. In the early 1970s the Handlers formed a film company and bought the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus for $40 million. A 1974 investigation found Mattel had issued false and misleading financial reports, including channel stuffing, and the Handlers were ousted; Ruth sold her last Mattel stock in 1980. After Mattel Electronics lost $394 million in 1983, the company refocused on its core brands and later on films, Netflix series and games such as Roblox and Fortnite.

• Chatty Cathy in 1960 used a tiny pull-string phonograph and the voice of June Foray.
• For Hot Wheels in 1968, Elliot hired Raytheon missile designer Jack Ryan, who used piano wire suspension and low-friction Delrin bearings.
• Christie, introduced in 1968, was Mattel's first African-American doll.
• The We Girls Can Do Anything campaign arrived in 1985 and the first President Barbie in 1992.
• In 2007 Mattel recalled over 18 million products worldwide over lead paint and detachable magnets.

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Rupert Murdoch inherited a controlling interest in The News, an Adelaide afternoon tabloid, in 1952 after the death of his father, Keith Murdoch, and used News Limited from 1954 to build a chain of Australian papers. In the 1960s he moved into Britain with The Sun and the News of the World. In 1986 and 1987 he broke the print unions, the National Graphical Association and SOGAT, by secretly building an automated plant in Wapping, moving production overnight and replacing striking workers through months of violent clashes. In the United States he bought the San Antonio Express and News in 1973 and the New York Post for $31 million in 1976.

In 1985 he bought 20th Century Fox and paid $3.5 billion for the Metromedia stations, becoming a U.S. citizen on September 4, 1985, to meet rules barring foreign ownership of TV stations, and launched the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986. Sky Television losses left News Corporation deep in debt by 1992 until a merger with British Satellite Broadcasting created BSkyB; Star TV followed in 1993 and Fox News Channel in 1996. MySpace, bought for $580 million in 2005, sold for $35 million in 2011. The 2011 phone hacking scandal closed the News of the World and ended the bid for full control of BSkyB, and in 2013 the company split into 21st Century Fox and News Corp before Disney bought 21st Century Fox for over $71 billion in 2019.

• Fox's broadcast network started with a late-night show hosted by Joan Rivers.
• Murdoch argued that satellite television threatened totalitarian regimes by letting viewers bypass state-controlled TV.
• The News of the World hacked voicemails of the royal family, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and the families of dead soldiers and 9/11 victims, along with missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
• Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones, resigned, and the NDS Group subsidiary faced allegations of using hackers against rival pay TV operators.
• After the Disney sale the Murdoch family kept 39% voting power across the remaining companies.

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The Port of Rotterdam covers 105 square kilometers and was the world's busiest port by cargo tonnage from 1962 to 2004, before Singapore and Shanghai passed it. It handles over 428 million tons and 14.2 million TEUs a year for a hinterland of more than 500 million consumers. In the 19th century, as river routes to the North Sea silted up, engineer Pieter Caland proposed the Nieuwe Waterweg, a canal in which river currents were supposed to scour a dug pilot channel to full depth. Clay, peat and incoming tides defeated that plan, laborers finished the job by hand, and the waterway opened in 1872. In the 1970s the port built new land in the sea at the Europoort and Maasvlakte.

A second Maasvlakte extension was suspended in 2005 by the Dutch Council of State over marine habitat damage, then approved with compensation measures and opened in 2013. The EECV quay has a 24 meter draft, and the ore carrier Berge Stahl, drawing 23 meters fully loaded, could dock at only Rotterdam and one terminal in Brazil, timing tidal windows through the Eurogeul channel. The Delta Terminal, nicknamed the Ghost Terminal, runs automated guided vehicles that follow magnetic transponders in the pavement and automated stacking cranes. The Maeslantkering storm surge barrier guards the port, which aims for zero emissions by 2050 through cold ironing and paid €5.6 million in green rebates in 2024.

• The squat effect pulls a moving ship deeper into shallow water, so ships with one meter of clearance need strict speed control.
• The port authority has about 1,270 staff, and its 2019 Container 42 project sent a sensor-packed container on a two-year trip around the world.
• Each Maeslantkering door is roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower on its side and sinks into place by flooding its hollow chambers.
• In the bombed Kop van Zuid district, the former Holland America Line headquarters became the Hotel New York in 1993, and the Erasmus Bridge opened in 1996.
• The timber Floating Office Rotterdam opened in 2021, rises and falls with the tides, and houses the Global Center on Adaptation.

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Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, Stanford classmates who had built high-frequency trading platforms in New York, founded Robinhood in 2013 with $3 million in seed funding and launched zero-commission trading in 2015, when brokers charged $5 to $10 a trade. Early investors included Snoop Dogg, Jared Leto and Nas, and options and crypto followed in 2017 and 2018. Revenue came from payment for order flow, routing orders to market makers who profit from the spread. In December 2020 Robinhood agreed to a $65 million SEC settlement over disclosure and routing that cost customers an estimated $34.1 million in price improvement.

Trading volume jumped 139% in the second quarter of 2020, and outages led to a $57 million FINRA fine and a $9.9 million class settlement. On January 28, 2021, Robinhood restricted GameStop buying after the NSCC raised its collateral requirement from $700 million to $3.7 billion, forcing it to raise $3.4 billion in emergency capital; later antitrust suits were dismissed. It went public in July 2021 at a $32 billion valuation, suffered a voice phishing breach exposing over five million emails, cut staff by 9%, 23% and 7%, and paid $605 million to buy back the 7.6% stake Alameda Research had bought with misappropriated FTX customer funds. In 2025 revenue reached $4.47 billion with net income near $1.9 billion.

• Massachusetts regulators sued over gamification such as confetti after trades, and Robinhood settled the remaining claims in 2024 for $7.5 million.
• In June 2020 a University of Nebraska student died by suicide after the app showed a negative balance over $730,000 from a multi-leg options trade.
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz both called for an investigation after the GameStop restrictions.
• Robinhood bought Bitstamp for $200 million, launched a Gold card with 3% cash back and a desktop platform called Legend, and offered tokenized stocks in the EU.
• FINRA fined Robinhood $26 million in early 2025 over anti-money laundering and supervision failures.

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Zelle began as a defensive alliance. Facing PayPal and Venmo in the early 2010s, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo launched a joint service in 2011 called clearXchange, and Capital One and U.S. Bank joined by 2015. In 2016 Early Warning Services, owned by banks including PNC and BB&T, acquired the platform, and in June 2017 it was renamed Zelle. Unlike wallet apps that hold funds in between, Zelle moves money directly from one bank ledger to another, using Early Warning's directory and messaging layer while banks settle the funds later.

By 2022 about 80% of Americans could reach Zelle inside their banking app, and in 2024 it handled over $1 trillion across 151 million accounts, including $283 billion for small businesses. Users pay nothing, while banks pay a fee per transaction to keep customers inside their own apps. In April 2025 Zelle shut its standalone app, and by July 2025 about 2,300 banks and credit unions offered it. Fraud drew scrutiny: Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned executives in September 2022, the CFPB sued Early Warning and three banks in December 2024 and dismissed the case with prejudice in March 2025, and New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a similar suit by July 2026.

• Over 1,600 financial institutions had integrated Zelle by 2022.
• Cameron Fowler became CEO in 2023, and in September 2024 Zelle hired a general manager from Venmo and American Express.
• In May 2024 a Florida man pled guilty to taking about $250,000 by telling victims to reverse fake charges by sending money to themselves.
• Banks have added limits on new recipients and text confirmations to slow scams.
• Banks argue that a payment a customer authorizes is valid even when a scammer deceived them, much like cash handed over after an ATM withdrawal.

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Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko founded Revolut in London in July 2015 around a prepaid card for spending abroad in 90 currencies at the interbank rate. Instead of routing payments through SWIFT correspondent banks, it settled transactions from its own currency pools and absorbed the cost to win customers. By 2016 it had 300,000 users and nearly £1 billion in transactions. Revolut Business followed in 2017, along with a subscription model that former product owner George Robson said was modeled on Amazon Prime, stock trading in 2019, FCA registration for crypto in 2022 and a euro-pegged stablecoin in August 2026.

Revolut applied for an EU banking license in 2017 and received it in late 2018 from the European Central Bank via the Bank of Lithuania, then used passporting to operate across Europe. In the UK it applied in 2021, won a restricted license in July 2024 and a full license in March 2026, bringing deposit protection up to £120,000. Growth brought problems: a U.S. payment flaw in late 2021 and early 2022 let criminals trigger about $20 million in refunds from corporate funds, a 2022 cyberattack exposed 50,000 customers, and the ECB restricted some activities in 2026. Revolut moved from a £25 million net loss in 2022 to $6 billion in 2025 revenue and a $115 billion valuation in a July 2026 share sale.

• Revolut now serves over 80 million customers in 40 countries with more than 12,000 employees.
• Storonsky said in April 2026 that Revolut is targeting a U.S. IPO in about two years at a $150 billion to $200 billion valuation.
• It spent over $100 million entering Mexico and won conditional approval for a U.S. bank charter in September 2026.
• In 2025 Revolut froze accounts of some customers holding Russian passports who lived legally in Europe.
• It sponsors Manchester City shirts and Audi's 2026 Formula One team, and in June 2026 required graduates and interns in the office three days a week.

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Raytheon, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1922 as the American Appliance Company by Vannevar Bush, Lawrence K. Marshall and Charles G. Smith, spent the Cold War living two lives. After building magnetrons and proximity fuses in World War II, it entered guided missiles in 1948, and in 1950 its Lark became the first missile to intercept and destroy a flying target using semi-active radar homing. The Sparrow and Hawk followed, and Raytheon built the Apollo guidance computer. Because defense budgets swung with geopolitics, it also bought Amana Refrigeration, washer and dryer maker Speed Queen and educational publisher D.C. Heath as a hedge, while ventures such as the RAYDAC computer and the PRT 2000 transit system failed.

The 1991 Gulf War, when Patriot interceptions of Scud missiles played on live television, pushed Raytheon to sell Amana, Speed Queen and its publishing arm and buy E-Systems, Chrysler's defense unit, Texas Instruments' defense business and the aerospace and defense business of Hughes Aircraft, which brought large early warning radars like Pave PAWS. It formed Forcepoint after buying Websense, merged with United Technologies in 2020 and became RTX in 2023, based in Arlington, Virginia. In August 2024 RTX agreed to a $200 million State Department fine over more than 750 export violations, and in October 2024 the Justice Department announced nearly $1 billion in penalties covering defective pricing from 2009 to 2020 and bribery of officials in Qatar.

• The name Raytheon combines old French and Greek and is translated in the episode as light from the gods.
• On September 11, 2001, Raytheon had an office on the 91st floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
• China sanctioned the company in 2020 and again in 2023 over arms sales to Taiwan.
• A plant acquired from E-Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida, drew 2008 lawsuits over trichloroethylene in groundwater.
• The EPA ordered groundwater treatment in Tucson, Arizona, for contamination dating to 1951 at a plant inherited in the Hughes deal.