NY TIMES INTERVIEWS XPOSURE STUDENTS

County Lines | Greenburgh
A Lesson in Finance Also Learned at Home
Susan Farley for The New York Times

By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: October 23, 2008
GREENBURGH


FOR the most part, they are shielded, their parents seldom letting on what is really going on. But trouble has an insidious way of making itself known, and 11- and 12-year-olds in the Town of Greenburgh seem to have slowly come to realize that the American economy is dreadfully sick.

Jasmine Bradwell, 11, whose exuberance is crowned by a ready laugh, knew something was wrong when she visited Costco two weeks before Halloween. “They had plenty of candy,” she said. “Last year they were out.”

Her assessment that people are not buying as much candy may be less than authoritative because she was in Costco before the season’s peak, but Jasmine has also seen how many stores are seductively trumpeting sales and she worries that people have become gun-shy about shopping. Christmas and her birthday are coming up, and perhaps she won’t get as generous presents as in the past.

Lordess Turner, 11, was recently selling chocolates to raise money for her school and, she recalled, “People said they couldn’t pay for it.”

“The stock market is going down, and they don’t get as much pay as they used to,” she said.

Jasmine and Lordess were among a dozen children, most of them sixth and seventh graders in Greenburgh’s schools, who sat around a table at the Theodore D. Young Community Center chatting about the economy. They are part of an after-school practical-business program that Greenburgh is running under a $335,000 contract with a nonprofit firm, the Xposure Foundation.

The students will learn the mechanics of applying for jobs and good etiquette and habits at work. They will also receive $12 a week to save or invest as they see fit. Some money may wind up in partial shares in the stock market, so the students could soon learn about the maddening capriciousness of that beast.

The students, for the most part, don’t watch news programs or read The Wall Street Journal regularly, but the bad news is out there in the ether — in remarks dropped at the dinner table, in stray comments from relatives, in sudden moves friends make because a house has been foreclosed on. Some end up worrying and wondering, even if their parents try to cheer them up.

Giovanni Sanchez, 12, learned that an uncle had been fired. Keyonah Bratton, 11, learned the same about a cousin of hers. Awa Nyambi, 11, a slight, bright-eyed young man, has a mother who works at a hard-hit travel company in White Plains. “Mom was talking about the stock dropping and how they may have to let go of some people, people who work on her team,” he said. “They don’t have all the money to afford to keep them on the team.”

Adriana Bailey’s father works for the New York Stock Exchange, though, like many other 12-year-olds, she doesn’t know precisely what her father does.

“Lots of people at his job are getting fired, and he’s afraid he’ll be in the next round,” she said.

Her eyes glimmered, and she looked palpably upset and a little confused. “He used to buy a lot of stuff, jewelry and laptops,” she said. “He has to stop buying it.”

For one thing, these children are clearly sensing the desperate maneuvers of high finance and the United States Treasury.

“Popular banks like Chase are taking over little banks,” Jasmine said. “People are losing their bank accounts. My mom changed to Chase. Before she had her money in HSBC.”

In many ways, they know their parents’ days of wine and roses are over — at least for a while.

Ciarra Williams, 12, has a friend who had to move back with her father after her mother lost her home.

“A lot of people are losing their houses because of the high mortgage, and it’s causing poverty,” she said.

“My mom’s friend, their house is about to go into foreclosure because she couldn’t pay,” Jasmine chimed in. “It was a nice house too.”

Teara Williams, 12, Ciarra’s twin sister, noticed how her school was trying fund-raising gimmicks like talent shows so it could afford to maintain the school and buy supplies.

And the students are mad at the way grown-ups have frittered away money, even as our new Gilded Age has been turning to dross. Jasmine wondered what was the need of a new Yankee Stadium when the old one did the job perfectly well.

“I could see if something was wrong with the building, but who needs a new stadium?” she said.

That sparked an echo of outrage from Ciarra. “They’re going through a depression and they think about a stadium?” she asked. “It makes no difference whether it’s old or new.”

Their sense of the nation’s financial meltdown is already influencing their plans for what they will do with the money they earn. They’re thinking of investing in stocks that rely on what people always do, good times and bad. People have to eat even if a depression hits. So McDonald’s was a stock the students touted.

“I’m going to invest in Apple,” Jasmine said. “They make a lot of money — iPods, iPhones, computers. People like that stuff.”

That brought a chuckle from Raymond L. Thomas Jr., Xposure’s executive director.

“It’s always the kids who know when the next big thing is,” he said.

But Jasmine quickly confessed to some second thoughts about her money.

“I’ll put it in savings,” she decided. “Because the way the stocks are going. I’m going to lose.”