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.