Tuesday: My first hearing
Today I went to my first hearing on Capitol Hill. I was sent to cover the Senate Housing and Urban Affairs meeting on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, featuring Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as the only witness. It began at 10am, and was in room 538 Dirksen Building. Firstly, let’s talk about how to hail a cab. As silly as it sounds, I’ve never really hailed a cab by myself before. So there I was, timidly holding my hand out into the street feeling like I was somehow prostituting myself, and ten minutes later I finally managed to hail a taxi.

Arriving at the Senate building, I straggled into the crowded room and luckily found a single chair in the back row wedged between two other professionals. I pulled out my coil-bound notebook, and sat quietly as the hearing began. 1.5 hours later my notebook was littered with 4-5 pages of scribbles recording the Senators’ statements, and Alan Greenspan’s opinion on the issue. Two things surprised me about the hearing. The first being that Alan Greenspan, contrary to my expectations, is actually an engaging speaker. His concerns about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s growth as one of the largest financial institutions in America were well articulated, and supported by common sense arguments. The second surprise was that I actually found my business education useful. I could draw upon my meager finance understanding and was able to catch the gist of the logic behind Fannie and Freddie’s systematic risk to the economy, and the fact that their implicit subsidy as a GSE gives them an incentive towards maintaining a higher leveraged capital structure than similar firms. Alfie Davis would be proud.

After unfcomfortably having camera men squeeze past me back and forth countless times because i was sitting in the last row of chairs, I glanced at my watch and realized that somehow I would have to gracefully exit the arena to attend a luncheon at the CATO institute. The CATO institute was holding a book review entitled, “Just Get Out of the Way: How Government Can Help Business in Poor Countries.” While the presentation was uncomfortably right-wing perspective, I had the opportunity to chat with a fellow attendee about politics; in particular, the shortcomings of the Bush administration. And while this isn’t a particularly exciting thing to report, it was momentous in that I could actually carry an intelligent conversation about American politics. Maybe I’m learning something here afterall.