Ryan's Bailout

Even though the Treasury has failed to bailout our personal financial situation, Ryan has still managed to pick up a few of their ideas and implement them elsewhere in his work. Here's a summary of what I think Ryan does or has done so far...

1. He writes up country briefs which get used for meetings and anything that has to do with that country. Country briefs explain the current economic situation in a country - growth outlook, risks and policy challenges, financial crisis policy responses, international financial institution assistance, etc.

2. He works on the Bloomberg machine. Although I still have no clue what this machine does, I do know that it makes him come home late on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I think at the close of business on those days he gets information off of the machine about economic indicators in various Latin American countries of interest.

3. He writes talking points for meetings. One of the first weeks we were here Ryan wrote up the talking points for a meeting between his deputy assistant secretary (DAS) in the treasury and the Colombian trade minister and Colombian ambassador. Pretty cool.

4. He attends sweet meetings and listens in on awesome conference calls. Because he gets to/has to write up the talking points for these important meetings, sometimes he gets to go - like when he got to go to the Colombian meeting.

5. He gets to go to conferences. Yesterday Ryan got to go down to the Brookings Institute (a big think tank) for a big conference about the IMF recent outlook publication for the Western hemisphere (Ryan saw me writing that and said "It's not a big think tank. It's the world's most important think tank"). Pretty cool.

6. He writes US position on IMF decisions and World Bank decisions. Ryan's involved in writing/reviewing these positions - he even made some big decisions about what the kind of funding one country got after researching all by himself. So beware because apparently he's got the IMF funding on a string.

7. He does stuff with country risk assessment and country vulnerability. I just asked him what vulnerabilities. "Just vulnerabilities. Capital account problems, external financing needs, whatever." Ok.

8. He gets to go to happy hour. Lucky for Ryan his office is super hip and has weekly happy hours where the desk economists/receptionists/etc have a good ole time, order pizza, and of course have coke and gingerale for those couple mormon boy interns. I think he likes it.

Ryan's got a pretty sweet set up. I think he's really enjoying the work he gets to do, especially since it's all substantive and isn't typical intern coping and answering phone calls. He's come at a great time since the office happens to be down a couple of desk economists and the interns have been asked to pick up the slack. Also it's right next door to Obama's house. I think he's awesome.