The UK Parliament’s Marshall Scholarship scheme funds American graduates to live and study in Great Britain. With the support of the Marshall Scholarship, I moved to London’s Goodenough College in September 2013 and took up an MSc Economic Policy course at University College London. Having never formally studied economics before, my primary interests are in the relationship between the financial sector and the rest of the economy. What are the macroeconomic implications (and causes) of a bigger and more highly leveraged financial sector? How can we use new tools, such as complex systems theory, and more realistic assumptions about human behavior and statistical methods to construct an economic theory that is useful for policy making in the real world? What are the political implications of the “technical fixes” peddled by economics and risk management?