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.

Quarter 3 economic statistics are out now and being analyzed by a lot of economists, so I just want to talk a little about the findings and what they mean going forward.
Real GDP increased by 1.5% from the second quarter, and when compared to the growth from the second quarter, which was 3.9%, growth slowed down a considerable amount. Some of the key areas of the growth came from consumer spending, with spending on services increasing significantly. Among that area, spending on health care was the biggest category increase.
Some of the things that offset GDP growth was a decrease in inventory investment on the part of businesses. A reason for this could be because of the rise in consumer spending in the services area rather than wholesale, and businesses noticing that and adjusting accordingly.
Along with the decent GDP growth over the past couple of quarters, the job market has also been turning around from the last few years. Unemployment has been dropping steadily, and employers are opening up new jobs and hiring more and more people. These are signs of a recovering economy, but at the same time things could turn around just as quickly as they have before.

There has been a push by China recently to have its currency become one of the currencies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stores as a lending reserve. This is a big move for China, as it is a bid to help it become an even larger economic power in the world. The IMF is an international organization that countries can request funds from to help finance different projects that they may have.
If China is successful, and the IMF takes in their currency as one of their currencies, the value of the currency will likely increase significantly. This means that all of the money that China, and the Chinese people, currently have gets more valuable, meaning China just got a lot richer and has more leverage with their currency. It will be interesting to see what happens and how it affects China and the countries that it deals with.

I recently read an article that talked about financial start-ups and how they fit into a world that is already dominated by the banking industry. There are an increasing number of start-ups who are aiming to take business away from banks by offering better services, or services that don't cost as much money as they do at big banks. To some degree, it is actually working. Many people who are savvy enough to shop around for different services are choosing these companies over big banks.

For now, this is just a thorn in the side of most banks, and not a real threat yet. But if banks don't start to become more competitive with their products and services, they could be facing a real threat very soon.

There has been a bit more talk about Governor Dalrymple's use of the retention bonus program since I last talked about it. Again, most people were surprised by his use of the bonuses, mostly because it hasn't really been utilized before, but also because of the amount of the bonuses given. Because of this use, many of the state legislature are talking about making changes to the program in 2017. One legislator has said that it is unlikely that the program will actually disappear, but the goal would be to reign in its usage.
Dalrymple has again defended his use of the bonuses, saying that each of the individuals who received them have been offered other jobs with very competitive salaries. Of course there is not really a way to know if that is true or not, but if so the use of the bonuses, and the high amount of them, make a little more sense and can be somewhat justified.

Today President Obama announced his rejection of Canada' s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. This pipeline project has been in the works for over seven years, and would connect existing oil pipelines from Alberta's oil fields down to refineries in Illinois and the Gulf Coast. On the way, it would bring some of North Dakota's oil with it, to a tune of over 800,000 barrels of oil per day.
Advocates of the project assert that it would create large infrastructure jobs, thus boosting the economy and workforce of many different states. In addition, it would further decrease our dependency on foreign oil by helping to lower domestic costs.
Those opposed to the project mainly cite large environmental concerns as their biggest problem with the pipeline. They claim that it would hasten the already deteriorating atmosphere, and harm the environment surrounding both the oil fields and along the pipeline.
I'm not too educated about the pipeline, but it seems that most politicians from North Dakota, democratic and republican, fully support the building of the pipeline to increase our economy, and in that sense I would have to agree with them.

This week I kinda want to talk a little bit about different current events that are going on both local and national, and just give me thoughts on it a little bit.
In particular today, I want to talk about something that happened in North Dakota that I read an article about. North Dakota has a program that allows the governor to allocate bonuses to state staff, which was implemented in 1999, but has only been used extremely sparingly. This year, Governor Dalrymple used this program pretty liberally, giving many members of his staff up to $30,000 in bonuses.
Defending his position, he stated that these staff are extremely valuable, and in order to stay competitive with the job market they need an incentive to stay.
I generally completely agree with the Governor's position, as in a lot of cases low to mid level government job's aren't as competitive in terms of wage compared to private sector jobs. If North Dakota wants to keep going in the right direction, you need people that are willing and able to do the job.

As I was explaining, there are three main things that need to be taken into consideration when choosing what market you will want to enter. Optimally, you will want to enter the market that you think the least amount of teams will enter, a market that you have cost advantages in, and you will want to set a price that will get you the largest market share.

Taking these three things into consideration, my team and I have chosen the market that we will enter, but have yet to decide on an exact price that we want to charge. We have good costs for this market, and generally this market isn't one that has a huge profit margin, so hopefully other teams won't be as likely to enter it. It's a really fun game that makes you think a lot, while applying concepts we have learned from different classes, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out over the next month.