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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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1990-09-17
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BUSINESS, Page 48Business NotesTEACHING
What is inflation? What causes a budget deficit? Many adults
know the answers all too well, but most high school students have
no idea. So says a survey released last week by the New York-based
Joint Council on Economic Education, which found that only one out
of three high school students in its 41-state poll could define
such basic concepts as profit and the law of supply and demand. The
8,205 eleventh- and twelfth-graders who took the 40-minute
multiple-choice test correctly answered less than 40% of the 46
questions. Declared William Walstad, a co-author of the study: "Our
schools are producing a nation of economic illiterates."
Though some of the questions dealt with difficult concepts or
called for subjective judgments, the results showed that many high
schools are failing to get even the basics across. Only 16 states
insist that all students take an economics course to graduate.
BAD LOANS
The repo men are working overtime. Paul Lamoureux, a Detroit
repossessor, is now pulling in 120 cars a month, compared with 80
a year ago. General Motors Acceptance Corp., the biggest U.S. auto
lender, repossessed 2.1% of its customers' cars in the nine months
ending Sept. 30, which was 25% more than during all of 1987. One
reason for the upsurge in bad loans is that auto lenders have gone
after riskier customers, among them first-time car buyers and
recent college graduates. Another problem is the longer term of
today's auto loans: typically 48 or 60 months, instead of 36. Some
buyers' cars fall in value faster than their loan balances, so they
decide to give up the auto rather than pay it off.