For the Crowell School of Business Investment Society, a financial club at Biola, the financial crisis has been more than just headlines.

The group’s investment fund has gone down recently due to the unstable market. Christie Lam, the club president, said this is frustrating, but “the money has to spin.”

Elaborating, she said that profit comes in cycles: the market is always changing, so in order to make profit you also have to be willing to go through a period of decline.

Members of the Crowell Investment Society learn the basics of money by using an online stock account simulation, which teaches them to buy and research stock without using actual money. The club also has a mutual fund with real money that is used to invest in stock.

In doing all this, the club strives to make students comfortable with investing by the time they graduate.

When asked if people in the club are worried about the financial happenings, Lam said there are a variety of responses, but many “don’t really see how it’s going to affect them yet.”

Daniel Crabtree, senior and vice president of the club, said the majority of students “don’t know, and don’t pay attention” to the financial world.

“There’s not a lot of interest, to be honest,” he said.

The problem that led to the current financial crisis started over a year ago when the housing prices went up, said Crabtree. He said people who wanted to buy houses took out loans, even though many had bad credit and could never pay them back.

Through the Federal Reserve, the government is supposed to regulate the money to keep inflation down and the market stable, he said. When banks realized that many of the people would not pay back their loans, they sold the loans in packages to other companies, such as the recently bankrupt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The amount of bad credit caught up with the lending companies in the end, he said.

Both Crabtree and Lam said that the market will always be changing, and it is just something to be dealt with.

Crabtree added that the financial crisis is all about perspective. He said he used to check the market all the time before he realized the toll it took on his life. He said he learned a lesson early on: that money is not everything, and that God should be the focus, regardless of the financial happenings in the world.

Lam also expressed concern for students’ use of credit to buy cars, pay school bills, rent apartments and more. She said it’s a cultural issue and people have the “I’ll pay for it in the future” mentality.

“People used to save money…but we don’t do that anymore,” she said.

A bankrupt Wall Street is a serious problem because the stock market is the “whole world on one stage,” said Crabtree. He said that while many hope to change the world’s dependence on America’s finances, “our health is the world’s health.”

The club meets every Monday at 6:30 p.m.in the Crowell Business Building, and is open to everyone. The majority of the members are business majors, including freshmen that are required to attend at least two meetings for their first-year seminar requirement.