EDUCATION
Contest teaches teens about economy,
stock market
Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times
Saumil Maheshvari, left, and Stacy Suh, of Troy High in Fullerton, give an oral presentation for
the Capital Markets Contest. Their team was one of seven finalists.
A Goleta student turns a fictional $100,000 into $1.5 million, then loses most of it. A
Bakersfield team tackles the economy and wins first place. The Capital Markets
Contest is a forum for growth.
By Nathan Olivarez-Giles
May 28, 2009
Charles Clow has some advice for the Obama administration on how to get the U.S. out
of the recession.
"The wheels here need to be greased," Clow said. "People have to want to spend money
again and that's our problem -- they don't want to spend money. We need to increase
government spending and cut income taxes and payroll taxes and get money flowing."
On Wednesday, Clow and three of his colleagues won $500 each and an all-expenses-
paid trip to New York to visit the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq exchange and
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for their analysis on how the global economic
crisis began and what can be done about it.
But Clow, 18, and his friends Kenyon Christensen, 18, Laurie Shafer, 17, and Joshua
Novins, 18, aren't financial experts.
They're high school students. And the four of them, from Centennial High School in
Bakersfield, graduate today.
Together, they took first place in the Capital Markets Contest held at the Federal
Reserve's Los Angeles office and organized by the California Council on Economic
Education and the CFA Society of Los Angeles.
"The difficult part of getting us out of this is we need to tell people that the reason we got
into the recession is because they were spending money they didn't have and because
they were greedy, while still telling them that we need them to start spending again,"
Clow said after his team's victory over six Southern California high schools.
"That doesn't make a lot of sense to most people, wh