If I Were President...

If I were president, I would make it mandatory for those wanting to invest their money to take a course teaching them basic economics. I understand that almost every high school student has to take an economics class, but most people don't recall those classes apparently. I also understand that this might privilege those who are smarter in the process of yielding higher returns in the stock market, being able to identify wise property investments, etc. YES! Duh! That's the point.

Seems to me that a large reason why the stock market (and the housing market, and the credit markets, and every other market) has been on the downturn is because people freak out and think they have to sell off all their investments, when in actuality, holding onto those invesments will make them better off in the long run.

Some of it is common sense, and that's not teachable. But much of it isn't common sense, and people shouldn't be expected to intuitively know things about large-scale economies. Towards those ends, I think there should be some system in place teaching people these things before they're given the privilege to invest in these economies.