Are credit ratings predictive of pending trouble in a company?  Or are they lagging indicators.  Is it more useful to look at the yield of a bond than its rating?

Is executive pay correlated with performance?  Do they actually get paid less when the company does badly.

What is the role of Credit Default Swaps (CDS) in the current financial crisis?  These are the credit derivatives I mentioned in class.

Where is the housing bubble/collapse most severe?  Who is it affecting?  How far will it go?  Is it only in the sub-prime sector?

Newspapers are in financial trouble (Chicago Tribune recently went bankrupt).  Analyze their business.

Analyze car makers, GM vs Toyota.

Analyze the airlines: United vs Southwest vs Virgin America.

Why are textbooks so expensive?  Will prices continue to rise?

What is the effect of the financial crisis on retirement savings?

Why are drugs so expensive?

In good times people would often refinance their mortgages.  How does this affect the  value of a mortgage pool?

Do hedge fund deserve their fees?

How is Facebook worth >$10B?

Conventional advice is that as you get closer to retirement your retirement portfolio should become less risky.  Why?  Quantify this.

When the economy is bad, should an institution like Northwestern spend more or less than usual from its endowment?

Is dollar-cost averaging a good investment strategy?