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Boulder High Team Gears Up for Challenge

Posted on: Friday, 17 February 2006, 21:00 CST

By Evan Krasomil, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.

Feb. 18--Aggregate demand. Inflationary pressures. Personal consumption expenditures.

These aren't the sorts of things most high school students spend their free time thinking about.

Most high school students -- and many adults, for that matter -- may not even be able to define these terms. For a group of six Boulder High School juniors and seniors, however, these are terms and concepts they know and use with confidence.

On March 1, the group will compete in the regional round of the Fed Challenge, a nationwide academic competition conducted by the Federal Reserve. The Fed Challenge places competing teams of high school students in the role of the Federal Open Market Committee.

The Federal Reserve has raised the important short-term interest rate known as the federal funds rate 14 times since June 2004 in an effort to curb inflation. The interest banks charge each other on overnight loans accordingly has increased, meaning loans for things like mortgages are gradually getting more expensive.

Students must present a highly researched, 15-minute proposal to raise, lower, or maintain federal short-term interest rates. After their presentation, the students field 10 minutes of questions from a panel of Fed economists, who preside as judges. District champions travel to the national competition at the expense of the Fed, and can earn scholarships and grants if they win.

"I'm excited about the kids getting to go in front of the Fed," said Richard Trinkner, a Boulder High teacher and coach of the school's Fed Challenge team.

This will be the first time Boulder High will field a team for the Fed Challenge. Should the team perform well enough at the regional competition in Denver, it would move on to a district championship in Kansas City on March 29. If it wins there, it would move on to the Fed Challenge National Competition -- in Washington, D.C., from April 29 to May 1 --where the students would compete in front of governors of the Federal Reserve.

"This is the first time any of us have done anything like this, so we were all pretty surprised to find that it's not a small thing," said Wyatt Hosmer, a Boulder High senior participating on the team. "You're actually talking to Fed people and the heads of banks."

In addition to Hosmer, seniors Laura D'Ippolito, Sarah Stein and Connor O'Steen, and juniors Joey Baum and Fleet White round out the team.

The six students were members of Trinkner's Advanced Placement economics class in the fall. All expressed interest in competing in the challenge after hearing about it. They have spent the last three months training and preparing for it, meeting once a week after school for roughly two hours per week.

"In class, we got to cover a lot of the theoretical stuff," Trinkner said. "With this competition, I feel like we're actually making it real."

The students on the Fed Challenge team see economics -- and their participation in the Fed Challenge -- as a way for them to understand real world issues.

"You hear a lot in the news, for example, about jobs being exported or out-sourced," O'Steen said. "It's good to be able to understand something like that and to be able to contextualize it. This helps us do stuff like that."

That's exactly why the competition is conducted, said David Russell, who works for the Oklahoma City Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

"These students gain an incredible amount of knowledge about the economy, because they have to have an understanding of how the Fed works," Russell said. "The competition itself makes people more aware of the factors that influence the economy. Which, in essence, makes our job easier."

While they know the competition will be stiff, the Boulder High team has high hopes. The group is putting the finishing touches on its presentation.

"We watched a DVD of the 2003 winning team," Trinkner said. "They were awfully sharp, but I think we're in that ballpark."

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Source: Daily Camera

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