For the past year, I have been advising a start-up, FedWise LLC, that is working to improve American’s financial literacy. (Full disclosure: I have a small interest in the company.)
FedWise’s vision is simple: to provide helpful, unbiased, reliable information to consumers about financial products and services like mortgages and credit cards.
The company recently launched its first two products.
One is a public website, FinFAQs, where visitors can get answers to specific questions. For example, “What are points?” or “What questions can creditors not legally ask me?“. If you are interested, please try it out. FinFAQs is still young, and the team welcomes feedback on the questions, answers, and interface.
The second, the FedWise Answer Engine, allows financial institutions to offer the Qs and As to consumers on their own websites while receiving sales leads and market intelligence. Several banks and credit unions have already signed up for subscriptions. Perhaps needless to say, FedWise is happy to talk to other institutions that might be interested in offering the service to their customers. For more info, click here.
Saturation Macroeconomics: Gobbledy-Gook or the Real Deal?
Time for a new mathematical model, a new paradigm, for macroeconomics?
Is there a patterned science representing the time dependent evolution of macroeconomics?
The last paragraph of the Economic Fractalist main page http://www.economicfractalist.com/ ….
The ideal growth fractal time sequence is X, 2.5X, 2X and 1.5-1.6X. The first two cycles include a saturation transitional point and decay process in the terminal portion of the cycles. A sudden nonlinear drop in the last 0.5x time period of the 2.5X is the hallmark of a second cycle and characterizes this most recognizable cycle. After the nonlinear gap drop, the third cycle begins. This means that the second cycle can last anywhere in length from 2x to 2.5x. The third cycle 2X is primarily a growth cycle with a lower saturation point and decay process followed by a higher saturation point. The last 1.5-1.6X cycle is primarily a decay cycle interrupted with a mid area growth period. Near ideal fractal cycles can be seen in the trading valuations of many commodities and individual stocks. Most of the cycles are caricatures of the ideal and conform to Gompertz mathematical type saturation and decay curves.
For the Wilshire, the US composite equity index March 09 to October 2011 was a 4 phased Lammert growth and decay fractal series..
x/2.5x/2x/1.5x :: 5/13/10/7 months. That’s an empirical real system observation – available to all – of the time dependent workings of the macroeconomic system.
2005 was the description, the hypothesis – March 2009 to October 2011 was the empirical asset valuation evolution…
The flash crash on 6 May 2010 ….. does that not meet second fractal criteria?
“A sudden nonlinear drop in the last 0.5x time period of the 2.5X is the hallmark of a second cycle and characterizes this most recognizable cycle.”
Maybe this is all occurring by chance alone …. Likely…. Very very very likely ….not.
If consumers want to learn about finance and money I would advise them to run away from bankers and credit card companies and run to http://www.zerohedge.com
Full disclosure, I have never earned one cent from zerohedge, nor given them one cent, but i’ve learned a million dollars worth of information about how finance really works.
Possibly the best free, open to the public forum available. Not for the faint of heart or easily offended. I would lurk for a few weeks before even considering posting. I lurked for a year before i posted.
I trust not, sites ran by bankers or the banking elite. They bend the laws to suit themselves and bend us over to live by the bent rules they paid for. It’s a rigged system, choose not to participate or prepare to be had.
This is a good initiative, as demonstrated by the following recent blog posts:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/the-age-of-reason.html
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/financial-literacy-pretty-dismal/
It strikes me in reading these, and the reader comments in response to them, that the issue of “financial literacy” and “general literacy” are closely linked. You cannot have the former without the latter. I am left wondering, for example, what the product of compounding “financial illiteracy” by “general illiteracy” might be?
A
As to the Marginal Revolution entry, it appears that you may also need to tackle age-related dementia as well.
Good luck!