NYU
On June 16th, students woke up in the Big Apple and started a week’s study at New York University’s (NYU) journalism department. There they got a chance to meet Bethany McLean, the award winning financial journalist, famous for uncovering the Enron scandal. She talked about her reporting of current financial scandals, about the process of organizing complicated material and making financial material come alive, as well as her recent work for Vanity Fair covering the downfall of Steven A. Cohen and the SAC hedge fund.
On Tuesday, students met Larry Rubenstein, Capital Markets Managing Counsel for Wells Fargo. As an expert in securitized assets, Larry talked them through the growth of securitized assets in the US, the development of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and how that differs from the European model. He also talked about the housing boom and the current state of both the housing market and the securitized debt markets today in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
On Wednesday, Kim Ruhl, economics professor at NYU’s Stern Business School provided students with a general view of the US economy, the recovery and budget/political issues with an emphasis on the differences in the political and economic situations in the UK, Europe and the US. In the afternoon, students had the chance to quiz Gerard Baker, editor in chief at The Wall Street Journal, the largest newspaper in the United States which has a circulation of about 2.4 million copies.
The following day, Sean Capperis, a Data Manager and Research Analyst at the Furman Center, lectured them on income inequality in the region. A week of interesting lectures was rounded off by Leslie Wayne, former New York Times business reporter and NYU adjunct, who talked about corporate corruption and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, its global reach and how businessmen, kleptocrats and government officials are increasingly being caught by it.
mafjsummerschool 