Interest Rates

Part 1
1. APY is a percentage of interest being earned on deposited money in an account, based on the compounding method of the institution, assuming a 365 day year.
2. American Express Bank had the highest APY of 1.00% and Nova Bank had the lowest APY rate of .1%.
3. FDIC insured means that every account in a bank is insured for at least $250,000 if something were to happen to that bank.
4. Yes, I believe it is important for a bank to be FDIC insured. Putting money into a bank that isn't insured is risky especially in the economy today.

Part 2

State	City	Loan Amount	Product	Lender	APR
Wisconisin	Milwaukee	$250,000	30-year fixed	Flagstar	4.422%
Texas	Dallas	$250,000	15-year fixed	InterBank	3.375%
California	San Francisco	$250,000	30-year fixed	American-Interbank	3.918%
New York	New York Metro	$250,000	15-year fixed	Aurora Bank	3.544%
Nebraska	Lincoln	$250,000	5/1 ARM	AimLoan.com	3.118%
Michigan	Detroit	$250,000	7/1 ARM	Flagstar	3.527%

Based on the mortgage rates above, I can conclude that the current mortgage rates are very staggered depending on the product and the lender. A shorter mortgage plan has lower interest rates but require a larger payment. I can also conclude that the rates get high in more populated areas and lower in less populated areas.

Enron and Arthur Anderson

The Enron and Arthur Anderson case that led to the collapse of Enron company was the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. This collapse is one of many that was caused by altered financial statements that later became known to the public and the stocks crashed. Before this all became known to the public, Enron appeared to be doing fenomenal. Their annual revenues in the 1990's were at around 10 billion dollars, and in the year 2000 were at 101 billion dollars. The financial statement fraud began when the company used accounting techniques such as unconsolidated partnerships and “special purpose entities” to prevent certain accounts to show up on the reports. In August of 2001, this fraud began to get noticed by the public. The CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned for reasons unknown and the company reported its first quarterly loss in 4 years. As more fraud became known, the company did worse and eventually it was downgraded to below investment-grade status. People stopped investing and Enron had to file for bankruptcy. Billions were lost in the stock market and many questions were raised about accounting laws and regulations that may need be changed or instilled into the law.

Sources: http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/9267.pdf
http://articles.castelarhost.com/enron_questionable_accounting_leads_to_collapse.htm