Friday, March 16, 2007

Critique of Federal Reserve Podcast

As I started looking in the Informartion Technology High School website, I found some interesting stuff about the Federal Reserve System. Seniors who were involve in the Economics class, had to do a review about this topic. The teacher in charge, Moloney, asked his students from the second and Forth class to do a podcast about the Federal reserve system also known as the FED. I decided to check one of the podcast from the second class, and I chose Lissette's and Gisella's podcast

In their podcast they discuss thorougly the aspects of the Federal Reserve System and cover every question assigned to them, as I was listening to their podcast I was learning a lot about the Federal Reserve System, also know was the FED. They also provided me with a lot of Information about their topic and therefore I learned a lot. My only concern was that. the podcast didnt seem natural, it was something they read from a paper and therefore it made it boring. A good podcast should be natural, it should be said with enthusiasm and not as if "I have to do it" and thats it. Myh advice for them is to read what they have and take little notes, so as when they are speaking they will read their notes and rembember what to say, in this was the podcast will seem natural and will catch peoples attention.


Thursday, March 15, 2007

Compound Interest and the rule of 72

The rule of 72 is like a math formula. It helps to determine how long an investment takes to double. When I say the rule of 72 is like a math formula, is because investors divide 72 an amount of years to get an estimate of how many years it will take for the initial investment to duplicate itself. Interest which is calculated not only on the initial principal but also the accumulated interest of prior periods.

By using a compound interest calculator, we make money not only out of our initial amount of money, but also on the interest we made the first time. It sounds a little confusing but it is not.
Well I'm going to try to explain it in easier words. Let say I invest 100.00 dollars and the interest rate is 10% in one year I will make 200.00 dollars. The second year my interest rate of 10% will apply on the 200.00 dollars not on my initial amount of money.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Insider Trading Scandal-What happened?

On March 1, 2007 13 people were arrested under the chargesd of Insider Trading. This scheme involved four investements bankers, hedge funds, dasy traders, lawyers and also some supervisors who found out about the fraud that was occurring and blackmailed the traders inb order for them to keep their silence. According to the New York Times, this has been the most largest inside trading rings in Wall street since the 1980's. Some of this suspects are well known by society as big executives and stock brokers that worked for big companis such as "Bear Stearms" and "Bank of America." Over a 5 year period one of the accused men was said to have made over $5 million in illicit profits. Up to now 9 of the accused have been arrested and the other four pleaded guilty to crimes such as bribery and securitie fraud.