Bentley triumphant

A few weeks back I reported that our debate team had triumphed in the regional Fed Challenge, topping lesser known schools like Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and MIT.  Today I’m very pleased to report that our team has emerged victorious from the national competition in Washington DC.  As Vice President Joe Biden would say, “this is a BFD.”

I know what you are thinking; it is unfair that other schools had to compete with students who have been taught by the creator of TheMoneyIllusion.  Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this one.  My colleagues David Gulley and Aaron Jackson set up the program and do most of the coaching.  Of course most of the credit goes to the students themselves.  Once again, here is the list of students who vanquished the competition from universities in the Boston area whose students hardly know we even exist:

Christina J. Harstad

Satyajeet Jadhavrao

Pranay Kumar Jain

Peter Jurik

David Norrish

Maximillian Barco

Shohana Jannat

Victoria Lee Tran

Everyone likes a David vs. Goliath story; surely there must be some Hollywood producers interested in a story about how an unlikely group of students from Bentley were able to defeat those overconfident rich kids from the Ivy Leagues.  Something inspirational like Breaking Away, or the film about the spelling bee.

Now if only the Fed would adopt their policy recommendations.

BTW, I’m told a YouTube video of the competition is forthcoming—I’ll let you know.  I’ve also been told that in past years the winning team was awarded a substantial sum of money, but this year the prize was dropped.  Just imagine the team’s disappointment when they heard that news, after all their hard work preparing for the competition.  At first I thought that perhaps with all the recent QE, the Fed had run out of money.  But then I remembered that as long as they have paper and green ink, they never run out of money.

Later I was told that in previous years the prize was awarded by Moody’s, but this year Moody’s decided to drop the award.  Why could that be?  Perhaps their sales are down after questions were raised about all those sub-prime mortgage bonds that were rated AAA.  But no, Moody’s earned $189 million in just the 3rd quarter, on revenues of $513 million.  That’s one of the highest profit margins in corporate America.  After all the bad publicity, what better way for Moody’s to restore their image than by supporting these plucky underdogs?

Or if Moody’s won’t come through, perhaps some other corporate titan would like to get the good publicity one could expect by supporting our team.  You’d be supporting healthy collegiate competition as it was originally intended, before universities became unpaid farm teams for pro sports.  Competition, learning, public policy engagement; supporting our team would be an ideal way of burnishing your corporate image, particularly if you are one of those companies that made some, er, unfortunate choices around 2006-07.

PS.  Recently I’ve been extremely busy.  (No, I didn’t goof off because of vacation.)  I hope to catch up on old comments tomorrow and post something new.

Tags: Bentley University

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