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Reading 'Riting and Financial Literacy

by Paul B. Brown
Posted September 19, 2008 6:41 AM
Posted in

The talk shows nationwide were filled yesterday with discussions of the current crisis on Wall Street. Not just the financial talk shows, but the traditional ones where people yell that their taxes are too high and the Democrats are to blame, and the ones where they blame the Republicans for everything.

What was most interesting was how little everyone--callers and hosts--understands about the causes of the crisis specifically, and about finance in general.

I can live with the fact that people can't tell the difference between preferred and common stock, but not to know that the value of bonds rise as interest rates falls, or that the head of the Federal Reserve cannot buy a company on behalf of the government strikes me as pretty glaring gap in someone's education.

Does this mean a basic personal finance course should be mandatory in high school (and college)?

What do you think?

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cobyjim1's picture
Posted September 22, 2008 8:24 PM

Thank you for your post. In my opinion economics should be taught in High Schools so that students can get a better exposure to how out society’s economic engine works. The first real exposure I received concerning economics was in college and the whole economic concept was very interesting. During the last couple of decades the amount of satisfaction (utilities) has been too high. In turn the common concept of giving of oneself has been taken over by the idea that we should get all that we can acquire. The concept of giving allows for us to receive even more than we give, however expecting to get is a completely different concept. The idea of receiving more and giving less has caused greed and none of the basic economic principles are based on greed, but rather on how we as a society can help one another and not expect anything in return.

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