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Clark is making it part of his new mission to be a resource for the unemployed and the underemployed during this tough economic cycle.

The conventional wisdom about education and employment -- as your level of education rises, the less likely you are to be impacted by lay-offs -- has been completely flipped on its head this time around. This recession knows no boundaries in terms of education, skill level, training or years on the job.

If you have skills of a certain nature, try picking up some consulting work (aka freelancing) on a per-job basis. The Internet offers a variety of sites that hook freelancers up with employers. The San Francisco Chronicle's Tom Abate has compiled a list of such websites, including the following ones:

• eLance.com
• oDesk.com
• Guru.com
• crowdSPRING.com

These sites are being called "virtual hiring halls" because they're a modern adaptation of the union hall idea where workers would go to await job orders.

The National Safety Council reports that the number of people killed on the roads last year is the lowest it has been since records started being kept in the 1920s.

Of course, there were fewer deaths because people drove less during the run-up in fuel prices. But here's one overlooked factor: People were also driving slower to maximize fuel economy -- a key in preventing high-speed highway deaths.

Other factors at work here include the fact that cars are being made much safer with ABS brakes, electronic stability control, adaptive cruise control, airbags and more. In addition, some 83% of people are now wearing their seat-belts. Finally, road design is much safer today. Clark was recently reading about new wires that are being strung along freeway medians to prevent crossover collisions.

This is all great news and it's only going to get better. The consumer champ is heartened when he looks at his college-age daughter and her friends at school. There's a lot of societal pressure against driving drunk and they're all careful to select designated drivers when they go out.

Clark wants to issue a special warning about the unintended consequences of trading in a car.

Picture this scenario: You have a car and you're still paying off the note. You decide to trade it in and get a newer vehicle, taking out a new loan in the process. Several months later, you are contacted by the lender on your last car about missed payments.

What happened? The dealership never paid off your loan when you traded your car in…and you don't have the vehicle anymore.

Yet you are still responsible for payments on the car that you no longer own. Your credit is dinged because of the missed payments and your new car may be repossessed if you can't meet both loans!

A recent Associated Press article that Clark saw reports this is happening all over America. The car dealership that took your trade-in is not trying to cheat you. But dealerships are going insolvent left and right and they may not be able to pay off your note.

The AP report also had the following angle: The person who buys the car you traded in could have it repossessed from them because your original loan is outstanding. And they would still have the obligation on the loan they took out! Talk about a train wreck…

The real problem here is that state legislatures have not passed bonding laws that would protect consumers in the event a dealer goes insolvent. That's the real solution, but the dealerships have a powerful lobby.

So the takeaway is this: Do not trade in a car you still owe money on ever -- period. Pay it off before dumping it.

For months, Clark has been telling you how the student loan market has fallen apart, and how difficult it is to put together financing for school. The latest blow now comes with news that MyRichUncle.com has gone bust. MyRichUncle.com was an online student lender that offered clean, legit deals with low interest rates.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has been trying to restart lending. Clark, however, wishes they'd just stop. Part of the problem with the tuition run-up over the years has been that it was too easy to borrow money.

Universities have become inefficient providers of education. Much of the money goes to large bureaucracies and to research -- not to the actual cost of educating undergraduate students.

You'll get more bang for your buck at community colleges and so-called "directional colleges." The latter is simply any school with a description of where it is geographically in the name, such as Clark's alma mater Central Michigan U. These kinds of schools tend to devote more of their money to educating students instead of running a bloated operation.

Remember, if we open the student loan spigot again, we take the pressure off schools that is necessary for them to reform.