Questions about on campus living.....

The school newspaper, The News Record released the following information in it May 27th issue;
“University housing has received 3,015 housing applications from the incoming class,” said Todd Duncan, director of Housing and Food Services. “I would speculate that the data for Autumn 2009 will be in the neighborhood of 3,350.”As of May 22, University Housing and Food Services report the total of undergraduate applications for housing is currently at 3,839. The figure is up 28.9 percent from last year, while the normal occupancy is 3,815.In 2004, 78.7 percent of freshmen were living on campus. In 2007, the number jumped to 82.9 percent, according to UC’s institutional research reports.University housing can hold a maximum of 3,979 residents. Currently, it is estimated that it is 97 percent full.

Interesting.....in a recession college enrollment usually jumps up as we have seen in the past two years however on campus living intuitively should not. More students choose college in a recession but choose one that is close to home so they can drive to and fro and save money.

Could this increase in on campus living suggest parents are now placing more burden on their children in the form of, living off student loans? Are parents now worried about their own future that they do not want to support their offspring longer than they have to?

Especially with gas having decreased in price per gallon, it would be interesting to see the change in percentage of student with loans over the last 3 years as compared to this year......I have not found any data yet, but I am looking.

Obesity and probably the real cause.....

Interesting post found on Economix blog of NY Times;

This graph may show why Americans are getting more obese......Look at how cheap Butter and Soda are compared to Vegetables.

(Click on the graph to read it much easier).

From my Column, Money Talk

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly......

The past few weeks have created new hope in the American economic system. The stock market has rallied and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (30 largest publicly traded companies) is now in the black (up from close Friday Dec. 26th to close May 8th). The stress test results were better than expected and the jobless rate now at 8.9 percent is showing signs of leveling off. The signs of a turnaround are showing 18 months after a crash that will either be remembered or repeated.

Although this news sounds good, history will tell you that the worst years of the Great Depression were 1932 and 1933, well after the 1929 stock market crash. The Federal Reserve has learned a lot since then and taken some steps in the right direction, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows we have not made the turn quite yet. "Even after recovery gets underway, the rate of growth of real economic activity is likely to remain below its longer run potential for a while," he said is a speech on May 6th.

The market also needs to be considered, even though the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up in some ways it is still down over the last decade. You would also hope that pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the system would result in a stock uptick, much like an oxygen tank for the lungs of a tired runner.

The other problem and this concerns us college students (more than Greek bashing and asbestos alike) is unemployment is expected to remain high for some time, and with less small businesses being created it could be a year or two before unemployment falls. Most forecasts predict unemployment will peak around ten to eleven percent. So be prepared to expand you search for “good enough jobs.”

If this sounds like bad news, you could argue there is potentially worse news. With the current economic climate, political power has become the new big bank CEO in terms of playing the game and making the rules, let’s not trade one evil for another. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the media in April, “When, in the future -- or I'll just say, if, in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this…And where that requires a change of management of the board, we'll do that.”

The United States Government is not a majority shareholder of any banks, (yet). Even mentioning they will replace management is something that should not be tolerated for long. If Bank of America wants new management, they are allowed to vote on it at every shareholder meeting, and just last week they removed Ken Lewis from his position as Chairman (but kept him as CEO). If the Treasury or any other government department were to override the intelligence and rules of investors, this would be a great catastrophe. With General Motors, politicians became larger than life by firing Rick Wagner, then CEO of General Motors. However, General Motors is going out of business, while the banks are not.

Famous economist Milton Friedman once said, “The greatest threat to freedom is centralized power.” Friedman also mentions the government can do many great things and improve the lives of many with standard and uniform rules but the problem that occurs is in his words, “the substituting of uniform mediocrity for the variety essential for that experimentation which can bring tomorrows laggards above today’s mean.” Let’s hope leaders are not chosen as cabinet members or handpicked via the spoils system, or else we will see how those, “below the mean” could ruin what could be a great turnaround in the economy in 2010.

Superman........

Cincinnati Enquirer; "Miami grad snares plum job".

"A finance major at Miami, Budig was introduced to Wall Street during a New York trip organized by the college in early 2008. He interned at Goldman Sachs last summer and was offered a job. He said work weeks of 80 to 100 hours were common and said the intensity level is "elevated.""

I do not mean to hate, but lets see 90 hours divided by 7 days = 12.86 hours of work everyday, including Saturday and Sunday. So adding a measly half hour lunch this puts him at his desk and working from 7:00am to 8:30 pm everyday including Saturday and Sunday, and this is not one of his 100 hour weeks!

I am sorry but your rate of productivity drops so much after 50 hours of work in one week, that the next 40 hours getting you to a total of 90 would produce literally next to nothing in terms of positive productivity for your company and in essence lose them money...........(See graph above).

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May) celebrates the Mexican army's victory over the French army in Puebla on you guessed it, May 5th, 1862. France invaded Mexico in order to get debts owed to them and other European countries from Benito Juarez. Coincidentally, France did this at a time the U.S. was in its own war (Civil War 1861-1865), and helpless to aid Mexico.

The French Army had not been defeated in 50 years (due to lack of fighting anyone worth while). Even though the Mexican Army won the battle, they lost the war and Mexico City was captured by the French and put under puppet Maximilian's control.

Eventually, the U.S. got involved, after the U.S. Civil War they intervened based on Frances breach of the Monroe Doctrine and asked France to withdraw. By asking, I mean the United States sent troops to the border and established a Naval Blockade in the Atlantic to stop French reinforcements from coming in. They also supplied Benito Juarez the resistance and former Mexican Republic's leader with weapons.

Within a month, France was withdrawing from Mexico and Maximilian was later executed.

So drink, have fun and enjoy your Cinco de Mayo.....but when someone asks you what happened on that date please don't say, "I think its Mexico's independence day."

A Trillion is..........A Lot

A Trillion dollars is 1 million millions.

In perspective I found this on the web; It would take 1,000,000 days or about 2,740 years to spend a trillion notes. Our national budget is 3.5 trillion dollars, and just like a college loan, the "American Government," (taxpayers) will have to pay up sooner or later. But even if we don't have to pay back the trillions of principal we own to foreign countries, we will have to pay the interest in the short term.

According to the New York Times; The Congressional Budget Office expects interest payments to more than quadruple in the next decade as Washington borrows and spends, to $806 billion by 2019 from $172 billion next year.

So....the United States population is around 304 million. dividing the interest we owe on our debt (evenly, it will not turn out this way) by an educated guess of 200 million U.S. families (there are probably far less than that) we see that each families burden will be $4,030 dollars........For solely the interest in 2019.

Our generation will unfortunately be the generation that puts the most in (taxes, hours of work, etc) and gets the least out (no social security, medicare, etc)........