elizabeth a duke : the importance of financial education speech by ms elizabeth a duke, member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system, at the jump $ tart coalition investing in our future : financial education and washington event, washington dc, 8 april 2010. * * * good morning. i am pleased to be here with the greater washington chapter of the jump $ tart coalition for personal finance to kick off financial literacy month 2010. and i would like to take this opportunity to applaud each of you here today for your commitment to revitalizing the washington chapter. the coalition is a national leader among organizations that work to improve financial education for students from kindergarten through college. its programs provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to make informed decisions that will have a positive impact on their economic well - being. with a new leadership team and renewed enthusiasm, the greater washington, d. c., chapter of the coalition has joined forces with more than 100 individuals, businesses, and not - for - profit educational and government organizations – including the federal reserve board – to increase knowledge about personal finance among students in our region. the federal reserve system is made up of the board of governors here in washington and 12 regional federal reserve banks with branches across the country. throughout the federal reserve system, we work with the jump $ tart coalition – locally with the washington, d. c., chapter and through alliances between the reserve banks and other state chapters of the coalition – to achieve our shared goals. the partnership between the federal reserve and the jump $ tart coalition is a natural one. jump $ tart ’ s mission to develop a more financially literate population supports the federal reserve ’ s goal of a stable and growing economy. in collaboration with partners like you, jump $ tart enables students to make economically sound financial decisions in their personal and business lives. as students individually form households or start businesses, their collective decisions will shape the economy of our future. i am especially pleased to be able to represent the federal reserve in this effort as my personal commitment to financial literacy has spanned more than 30 years. i have been involved with a number of initiatives including some that took me into the classroom to teach students directly and others that provided teachers with tools and training to better prepare them to teach economics and personal finance. the need in this country for financial education is so great that we must continue to tackle it at all levels and with all available resources. we need to imbed financial concepts in

alan greenspan : financial literacy remarks by mr alan greenspan, chairman of the board of governors of the us federal reserve system, at the federal reserve bank of chicago ’ s money smart conference, chicago, illinois ( via videoconference ), 13 may 2004. * * * this morning i should like to broaden the focus of financial literacy to the education you are going to need more generally in the years ahead. within the next several years the vast majority of you will have completed your formal schooling and begun careers in private business, government, or the nonprofit sector. i suspect most of you have not as yet figured out what career you would like to pursue. but as with all the generations of teenagers that have gone before you, something will grab your interest and engage you. with me it was music. i was entranced with sound and visualized myself playing with the likes of the glenn miller orchestra or becoming another benny goodman. i practiced clarinet and saxophone three to five hours a day and, following graduation from high school, toured the country for a couple of years with a dance band. i was a good amateur but only an average professional. i soon realized that there was a limit to how far i could rise in the music business, so i left the band and enrolled at new york university. during my dance band years i spent the twenty - minute breaks from playing in reading. i became intrigued by books on finance, and, hence, at nyu i majored first in finance and, as my interest broadened, in economics and in what was then called mathematical statistics and now econometrics. in retrospect, that choice probably was not surprising since math was my most engaging course in high school. i graduated and joined an economic research organization. but my education did not stop. i earned a masters degree and went on to further studies at night at columbia university. at the age of twenty - seven i joined a very small wall street firm as a partner and was essentially in charge of making it grow. it did, and i eventually became the senior partner. but twelve hours a day at work left little time for school, and my aspirations to earn a ph. d. faded, at least for a time. however, the pursuit of my profession as an economist and the head of a consulting firm required that i broaden my knowledge, and i proceeded to read books, not only on economics and mathematics but also on philosophy, history, physics, and astronomy. i was