Talk at Middlebury College

I had the pleasure of speaking to the Student Investment Committee at Middlebury College on April 14. I gave a talk titled the 5 C's of Credit, but I also talked about Yankee Farm Credit, the Farm Credit System, GSEs, mathematical risk models and employment opportunities in Farm Credit. The talk was at the invitation of Dr. Scott Pardee, the faculty advisor of the SIC. And it all happened because of Congcong.

Last Christmas Congcong was telling me about a paper that she had written for an economics class. The paper was about how over-reliance on mathematical models had contributed to the financial crisis of 2008. That is a topic that interests me. Indeed, I had blogged about it last September, and I had mentioned one of Congcong's references in this post (the article by Felix Salmon in Wired Magazine).

Well, one thing led to another. I contacted Congcong's professor (Dr. Pardee) out of curiosity, and it eventually led to an invitation to give this talk. There were about 25 students at the talk. Before the talk, we went out to dinner at Fire & Ice. There were two professors (Dr. Pardee and Dr. Steve Pecsok) and I think nine students at dinner, plus me. The entire evening was a lot of fun. Thank you, Congcong! (And thank you, Dr. Pardee.)

The photo is an apple tree in full bloom in front of Painter Hall, a few hours before my talk.