Freshman Pavel Yankovsky was among the first to take the microphone: Nervously, he inquired about the financial crisis and why it started in the U.S. Like all the students who spoke, his English was good and his question seemed well rehearsed.
Clinton walked the audience through an abbreviated history of bad mortgages, derivatives and the false notion that free markets are infallible.
"It all seemed like a great idea at the time," she said, launching into an explanation of how the need for more checks and balances in the economy reminds one of the balance of power in the American government.
Afterward, Yankovsky, a thoughtful 17-year-old in a dark suit, with a bushy haircut threatening to go wild, didn't talk about the details of Clinton's response so much as the feeling he got listening to her. "It was brilliant," he said.
"I think that is the main thing our countries should work on, moving from the past, Cold War era," he said. What about the Soviet propaganda on the stage behind him? Yankovsky flicked his hand in that direction without looking and said: "I think that the past we should leave as the past."
