A highly selective view of events in the week ahead with important financial, legislative and political implications, put together by your friends at Sphere Consulting.

Edited by Edward Wyatt

• President Obama heads to the Far East at the end of the week to attend three economic summit meetings, beginning with the G20 on Sunday in Hangzhou, China, on the country’s southeastern coast. The president is expected also to conduct bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The trip is part of an eight-day swing through China and Laos, which will host the U.S.-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit.
• New regulations governing the commercial use of drones take effect today, and the F.A.A. is bracing for floods of people aiming to take the written exam that for-hire operators of drones – officially known as unmanned aircraft systems – must now pass before they can fly their aircraft. The rule doesn’t apply to drone enthusiasts who simply want to wow their friends by soaring above the barbecue or beach party. No word on how many drone pilots Amazon intends to have licensed for its drone-delivery program.
• Any hopes that the Obama Administration had in getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership through Congress during the lame-duck session seemed to disappear last week when Senator Mitch McConnell said the measure “will not be acted upon this year.” That is likely not to disappoint the two presidential candidates, who both have come out against the plan. McConnell did say, however that the trade pact “can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration.”
• The Internet of Things, that wondrous network that will allow you to use a smart phone and an Internet connection to control your home thermostat or, say, automatically rake your kitty litter box, is still in its infancy. The Commerce Department will aim to move that development along Thursday with a Webcast of a full-day workshop conducted by the department’s Internet Policy Task Force and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
• Immigration policy is certainly at the forefront of the presidential race. Unfortunately, according to the Cato Institute, many of the concerns the American public voices about immigration “are fueled by misunderstanding the effects that immigrants and their descendants have on the U.S. economy.” Cato, a libertarian think tank, will convene a full-day conference on Friday on Immigration Economics, looking at how immigration affects wages and the labor market, real estate and entrepreneurship, conveniently webcast here.
• Congress might be in the midst of a seven-week (!) vacation, but that doesn’t mean that some members aren’t working some of the time. On Monday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will conduct a field hearing in San Francisco on the boondoggle that the California High-Speed Rail Project has become. (Webcast here.) An initial cost estimate of $33 billion has skyrocketed to as much as $118 billion, even as the dream of San Francisco-to-Los Angeles service has withered. Roughly $4 billion of federal funds have been allocated so far.
• It might be the dog days of summer, but the city’s think tanks are in full flower, sponsoring seminars to fill even the most languid of late-August days. Defense, always a favorite, is the subject of a pair of discussions this week: On Monday, the Brookings Institution convenes “The Defense Budget, Overseas Contingency Operations, the Budget Control Act and Beyond.” (No webcast, however.) And on Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation conducts a panel titled “The Clock is Ticking: The Defense Agenda for Congress’s Last Few Months.” (Webcast here.)
• The Heritage Foundation is at it again on Wednesday, convening a discussion on the 2017 edition if its annual “Global Agenda for Economic Freedom,” which will promote the results of its annual Index of Economic Freedom and provide recommendations on policy reforms that the next presidential administration “could implement to boost prosperity and liberalize markets.” (Webcast here.)
• Coordinating the exchange of counterterrorism information between countries was the subject of intensive study by the Dutch government following the terrorist attacks in France and Belgium. The Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday will host a discussion on the topic between H.W.M. Schoof, the Netherlands’ national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, and Brig. Gen. Francis Taylor, the undersecretary for intelligence and analysis for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (Webcast here.)
• Thomas J. Curry, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other influential leaders will engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the most important issues and policies facing the marketplace lending industry at the MPL Summit, Sept. 13 at the Marriott Marquis in Washington. The summit seeks to create opportunity for responsible industry participants to propose standards and provide regulators and policymakers with consensus viewpoints on the regulation of marketplace lending.