As a result, Americans increasingly are becoming their own bank tellers, loan officers, insurance adjusters, checkout clerks, restaurant order takers, citrus-crop inspectors and mall concierges.

WSJ: Apps Reorder the Job Landscape

The Fed has also recorded a handsome profit on its emergency-lending programmes to healthy banks, as did the Treasury on its purchases of mortgage-backed securities and, so far, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on bank-loan guarantees.

ECONOMIST: America's bail-out maths

Satyajit Chatterjee at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and Felicia Anamaria Ionescu at Colgate University recently published a paper examining the possible market for student loan insurance.

FORBES: A New Market: Student Loan Insurance