Graduation season is here!

But instead of planning for a year abroad or embarking on exciting new careers, many new grads are instead paralyzed with fear over a weak job market and crushing debts.

“I am a slave to my student loans and I cannot take it," says Flickr user Rhiannon. She's a 27-year-old graduate of Arizona State University.

Related: Generation I.O.U. Slideshow

In 2011 two-thirds of college seniors graduated with roughly $27,000 in student loan debt. More than 38 million Americans owe more than a combined $1 trillion in outstanding student loans.

If you are a parent or a student, you know that college education costs have skyrocketed in recent years. What you may not know is that the annual cost of a four-year degree has risen three times as fast as the rate of inflation since the 1970s.

Why the U.S. higher education system is broken

What makes this crisis worse is the fact that finding a job after college graduation has becoming increasingly difficult in this tough

Investors are learning - the hard way - that when something seems too easy, it almost certainly is.

For most of this year, the idea of riding stocks higher - even buying successive new highs in the U.S. indexes – has been viewed as a path to effortless gains, supported by central banks’ easy-money resolve and a resilient (if moderate) economic expansion.

Now, suddenly, a cocktail of worry is served - its ingredients global-growth fears, unclear central-bank intentions and a market tape that had been stretched far to the upside. The mixture is a bitter one, most dramatically spurring a 7.3% buckling of Japan’s overheated Nikkei stock index as well as a shudder of downside volatility in U.S. stocks.

Related: Bernanke Speaks: Can Anything Slow Down This Market?

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (GSPC) had been “melting up,” in the common description, climbing a gentle slope to a new record at 1669 Monday, up 17% on the year and 23% since mid-November, without so much as a 4% pullback.

The U.S. Energy Department announced that Tesla Motors (TSLA), the electric car company founded in 2003 by PayPal creator Elon Musk, had repaid its $465 million loan nine years ahead of schedule. The Energy Department provided the funds to Tesla in 2010 as part of the Obama Administration’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program. Tesla said it was able to repay its loans by using a portion of the approximately $1 billion in funds the company raised in last week’s offering of stock and debt.

Related: Google and Tesla: Too Late to Touch?

“I would like to thank the Department of Energy and the members of Congress and their staffs that worked hard to create the ATVM program, and particularly the American taxpayer from whom these funds originate,” Musk said in a statement. “I hope we did you proud.”

The Palo Alto-based company employs 4,500 workers in the U.S. and has about $679 million in cash after paying off its federal loan. Taxpayer money helped Tesla finance its Model S