Monday, May 18 marked the first day of our Immersion Course at the Brookings Institution. The course was kicked off by an introductory address about the U.S. Government by our host, Ian Dubin. We discussed the various intricacies of the U.S. Government’s three branches, mainly focusing on the legislative branch. We role-played various scenarios that involve the congressmen or senators coming to agreement on various issues for a bill to become a law.

This is the first in a series of 10 blogs chronicling the experiences of 31 Global Master of Finance (GMF) dual degree students during their two week long immersion course in Washington, DC and New York. Each blog will be written by a small subset of students during their experience.

Next, David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy, provided an introduction to the different regulatory regimes in the U.S. We also had a candid Q&A session after his talk, during which the students discussed the effects of fiscal and monetary policy on the economy.

After a short lunch break, we had two more presenters: Patricia Kao and Winthrop Hambley. Ms. Patricia Kao is the Director of the Office of Financial Institutions Policy and the Office of Domestic Finance within the Department of the Treasury. During her presentation, she introduced us to the structure and mission of the U.S. Treasury. She then explained how the Dodd-Frank Act helps the Treasury to regulate financial markets.

Our last speaker, Winthrop Hambley, has been working for the Federal Reserve for 26 years, and currently sits on its Board of Governors. Mr. Hambley introduced the structure of the Federal Reserve System, the traditional method that the Fed has been using to regulate financial markets, as well as the new, nontraditional method that the Fed started to use after the 2008 economic crisis, and the potential risks that the Fed may encounter in the future.

Guest bloggers: Yibo Wu, Dibbasatya Ghosh, Hao Han (GMF 2015)