Interest Rates

1.  What is APY?

APY stands for "Annual Percentage Yield" and represents a yearly interest rate-or the rate of return- in which one pays their bank for an investment.

2.  What Institution had the highest APY and what was it?  Who had the lowest and what was the rate?

American Express Bank has a 1.00% APY and California First National Bank had a 0.65% APY.

3.  What is meant by FDIC Insured?

 FDIC stands for the "Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation" an is an independent government agency that protects people's deposits in insured U.S. banks in case they were to fail.

4.  Is it important to you that a bank be FDIC Insured?  Explain why or why not.
I think it is important that a bank have this type of insurance since it has been extremely successful since 1934. No depositor has lost any money insured by this agency.

Part 2:
Spend sometime looking into rates that banks charge for home ownership (mortgages)...  


Answer the following question:
Based on the information you found on mortgage rates above, what are two conclusions you have related to current mortgage rates?
1) The APR is 1% or higher for 30 year fixed mortgages verses 15 year mortgages.
2) The largest APR is 4.451% in the largest state on my list (California), so the size of the state and the percentage of APR must be directly related.

State	City	Loan Amount	Product	Lender	APR
Wisconsin	Milwaukee	$250,000	30 year fixed	North Shore Bank	4.151%
Arizona	Tuscon	$250,000	15 year fixed	Greenlight Financial Services	3.742%
California	Berkely	$250,000	30 year fixed	Quicken Loans	4.451%
Georgia	Atlanta	$250,000	30 year fixed	Anchor Home Mortgage	4.276%
Illinois	Aurora	$250,000	30 year fixed	Amerisave	4.443%
Iowa	Des Moines	$250,000	15 year fixed	Stonegate Mortgage	3.547%
Nebraska	Omaha	$250,000	15 year fixed	US Bank	3.964%

Enron Collapse

Enron was an American energy, services, and commodities business based in Houston Texas that flourished in the 1990s. During it's finest years, Enron was known as one of the most "innovative" companies in the country with revenues reaching $184 billion and 30,000 employees in 20 countries worldwide. Enron appeared to be flourishing and an extremely stable business to its investors-however, little did the world know that the company was in fact in a state of bankruptcy and doing everything it could to keep it a secret. Enron had used partnerships to hide their billions of dollars of debt but everything came crashing down in October of 2001 when Enron had no choice but to come clean. Even though it was the company itself that made the first offense, many blame Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditors, for overlooking obscene numbers in Enron's balance sheets. In fact, investigators say that this auditing error was "complicit in perpetrating one of the biggest frauds in corporate history." Due to this collapse, thousands of people lost their jobs and thousands of investors lost billions of dollars.

Sources:

http://www.personal-writer.com/sample/business-analysis/the-collapse-of-enron-managerial-aspect

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/16/business/enron-s-collapse-overview-arthur-andersen-fires-executive-for-enron-orders.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm