Teaching financial smarts timely play

Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has teamed up with Chicago Bears quarterback Kyle Orton to teach high school students how to be smart with money.

It's a good program that comes at a good time. We would suggest that the lesson plans of this money management program called "Financial Football" strongly emphasize that when it comes to finances, you better not fumble the ball.

Because a lot of people in the banking/investment world have lost a lot of money, and millions of others have lost their homes, by fumbling away financial responsibility. And just like a bad fumble hurts an entire football team, failure to grasp financial common sense has hurt an entire economy, including investors who have been smart with their money. Billions of dollars in losses from "creative" nontraditional mortgages, which should have never been on the market nor taken out by those who were in no financial position to own a home, has turned Wall Street into Fear Avenue and have dragged down the economy. A $700 billion bailout of the financial industry aimed at ending one of the worst financial crises in our history is in the works, a crisis brought on by sheer financial stupidity.

So if this new state financial literacy program works to help turn out a generation of new investors who can use their heads to stop from getting in way over their heads, it will have a done a lot of good.

But this financial nightmare can't alone be blamed on dumb financial decision making. Not all those investors were hoodwinked into taking out those mortgages on bad information, or because they did not completely understand what they were getting into. They knew the risks but took them anyway, because they just had to have that real big house or were foolishly banking on housing prices continuing to go through the roof to buffer those risks.

And some in the financial industry intentionally minimized or ignored those risks in the interest of making a lot of money. If only they could pay for their foolishness. But they can't because they don't have the money anymore. That is, unless the taxpayers bail them out.

So we would also suggest that "Financial Football" not only emphasize the basic skills of money management. It should also dedicate a few chapters to ethics and responsibility.

Expert knowledge of personal finance is only useful if the brain will engage it and greed does not rearrange it.

Give an "A" to anyone who not only understands the basics of financial numbers, but can also prove that they won't be misled - or mislead - when those numbers just don't seem to add up. Who truly know that if it sounds too good to be true, well...