Overview of blog assignment:
I honestly thought that writing these blog entries each week was a useful exercise. It got me to think and write about things that I normally would not take the time to put into words, or honestly even think about sometimes. On top of that, I used some of the blog entries to catch up on current events and different kinds of news, which was helpful.
Again being honest, I didn't always look forward to writing these, and at a few points let them slip my mind because I just became busy with other homework, work, or other things. After awhile it became difficult to think of things to talk about, and I ended up spending more time on it than I would've liked.
Overall though I think that it is a good semester long assignment that serves its purpose effectively.

One class that I haven't talked a lot about this year is my Chinese class. The semester has gone pretty smoothly. We have quizzes a few times a week to make sure that we are learning the characters, and do a lot of practicing and practice to form correct sentences. We also have a character workbook to help us learn the characters, and a regular workbook where we do translations and interpretations. The tests that we have had so far have gone pretty well, and I'm on track to get an A in the class. Overall it has been a good experience and my teacher is definitely one of the better ones that I have had.

Another of my classes, my finance class, has been fairly interesting as well. Recently we have been going over different "cases," or real life situations that concern different banks or companies offering products that are related to the class. For instance, the case that I worked on was about Bank of America offering investors what are known as reverse-convertible bonds. These products are bonds that allow the issuer, in this case Bank of America, to convert them to stocks at the day of maturity. This is desirable for Bank of America because if the stocks are worth less than the principal amount that they would have to repay, they make a lot of money off of the product. After analysis of the product, it really is not an attractive product to investors because of the large potential that you could just lose a lot of money if you are repaid in worthless stock. It has been fun to learn about a complicated product and I look forward to doing it more.

It's been awhile since I talked about my classes and how they are going, so that's what I will be doing over the next few blog posts.
The econ class I am taking, Game Theory and Strategy, has been more difficult than I expected, and has definitely been the most difficult econ course I have taken so far. Recently we have been focusing less on theory and more on applications of what we have learned. We have been learning about Auction Theory and Collective Action problems, which are very common situations in a lot of different real world jobs, especially politics. In addition to that, we have been learning a lot about Behavioral Economics, and why people do/do not always make rational choices when confronted with certain situations. It has been more fun to learn about these types of things rather than learning just theory with lots of math.

So the reason that the attorney general of New York actually served DraftKings and FanDuel with cease and desist orders is because the state claims that it is just a thinly veiled type of gambling. They assert that there isn't really any skill involved and it is more random chance that leads to winning, which is essentially gambling. And, of course, gambling is illegal in the state of New York, meaning these companies would not be able to operate there. They would lose out on a big chunk of revenue, and set precedence for other states to ban them as well.
Honestly I tend to agree with the state of New York on this matter, as I have actually checked these websites out it really is nothing but a glorified type of gambling. They use manipulative advertising to lure players into thinking that it is a game of skill, when it is essentially impossible to predict how each player will do each week.

So getting  back to the two sports betting companies DraftKings and FanDuel. They were sent cease and desist letters last week from the attorney general of New York state, demanding that they stop making money of New York citizens. Both of the companies had five days to stop or file suit against the cease and desist orders. They both decided to file suit against the attorney general and the state, and ask the court to rule that the companies business is legal in the state. This allows them to continue their operations in the state until a ruling is made in the court, although it has put a damper in their day-to-day, and made some people maybe a little wary of the business going forward.

There are currently two companies that are in a legal battle in New York after the District Attorney filed suit to prevent them from doing business.These companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, are fantasy sports betting sites that allow players to draft weekly teams and bet money on their team and pit them against other teams. They are notorious amongst the sports community because of their extremely large number of commercials and the questionable amount of money that they claim people can win on their site. In the state of New York, they recently had a suit filed against them claiming that the sites were simply a gambling website, which would be illegal. Next time I will go into more detail about the legal situation.