NJIT Biz Professors To Discuss on Oct. 20, Recent Wall Street Meltdown

NEWARK, Oct 14 2008

“Wall Street Meltdown: A Look at What Happened Last Week and What To Expect Next” will be the subject of a four-way panel talk with finance specialists from NJIT’s School of Management. The discussion, set for Oct. 20, 2008, from 3-4:30 p.m., in the Campus Center Atrium, will focus on macroeconomics, hedge funds, credit default swaps, savings and retirement strategies and more. (ATTENTION EDITORS: To attend and/or interview any of the professors, call Sheryl Weinstein, 973-596-3436.)

Speakers include William Rapp, PhD, Henry J. Leir Professor of International Trade and Business, who will discuss macroeconomics. From 2006 to 2007, one trillion dollars of equity—a sum equivalent to ten percent of US consumption—was taken out of homes in the US, said Rapp.

Michael Ehrlich, PhD, assistant professor, will discuss savings and retirement, with the primary message not to panic. He will also illuminate more about what the bailout represents and its ramifications.

Assistant professors Alan Yan, PhD, and Ron Sverdlove, PhD, will respectively illuminate hedge funds and credit default swaps. Hedge funds can do whatever they please because they are unregulated by the US government, said Yan. They make money by leveraging money. Sometimes the leverage was even leveraged, he adds.

Sverdlove will discuss how financial engineers, those with advanced math and physics degrees, developed a trading tool called credit default swaps and the problems this has presented. Sometimes the swaps were so far ahead in modeling new and even less understandable bets that regulators and investors couldn’t keep up, he added.

Tagged: school of management, michael ehrlich, william rapp, money, alan yan, international trade and business, wall street, hedge funds, ron sverdlove, henry leir

NJIT, New Jersey's science and technology university, enrolls more than 9,558 students pursuing bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in 120 programs. The university consists of six colleges: Newark College of Engineering, College of Architecture and Design, College of Science and Liberal Arts, School of Management, College of Computing Sciences and Albert Dorman Honors College. U.S. News & World Report's 2011 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT in the top tier of national research universities. NJIT is internationally recognized for being at the edge in knowledge in architecture, applied mathematics, wireless communications and networking, solar physics, advanced engineered particulate materials, nanotechnology, neural engineering and e-learning. Many courses and certificate programs, as well as graduate degrees, are available online through the Office of Continuing Professional Education.