Can't lose, except for the rest of us.

If Fannie Mae is Frankenstein, then Sallie Mae is the Bride of Frankenstein. Created by Congress, Sallie Mae, like Fannie Mae, was founded to do good, encouraging student loans as Fannie Mae encouraged home mortgages. But like Fannie Mae, it became privatized, with shareholders who it wants to please with escalating profits.

Its stock price has gone up nearly 2000 percent since 1995, but "60 Minutes" recently asked a pertinent question: "Does Sallie Mae's success come at too steep a cost to taxpayers and students?"

It's a 'can't-lose' business, guaranteed by you and me. "Once a student borrower goes into default, the government pays Sallie Mae all the principal and compounded interest that have accrued," reports "60 Minutes." "The loan then passes into collection phase. If Sallie Mae is the collector, it gets to keep up to 25 percent of whatever is recovered."

I call that "can't-lose plus!"

The banks also have a can't lose proposition because they are protected from loss by Sallie Mae. Both the banks and Sallie Mae join in efforts to sabotage the government's direct-loan program, which was started in the '90s to offer competition to high-interest bank loans, but now cannot offer incentives provided by Sallie Mae to schools because Sallie Mae has lobbied Congress to prevent the government program from doing so.