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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Ben Bernanke Gets His Reward

Mises Daily: Monday, March 24, 2014 by Christopher Westley

“Bernanke Enjoys the ‘Fruits of the Free Market,’” or so we’re told in a Reuters headline from March 4 about the former Fed chairman’s 40-minute speech in Abu Dhabi for which he received, ahem, $250,000. In the Reuters author’s defense, he was only quoting a DC lobbyist who was defending the amount, and added, Bernanke “will personally experience supply and demand.”

Well, yes, it’s just supply and demand and all that. No big deal and if you don’t like it, you must have something against markets. Still, it would be nice (and a bigger deal) if these reporters would quote someone outside of the accepted intellectual class of the Boswash corridor so compromised by being among the primary beneficiaries of all the new money Chairman Ben and his comrades created, ex nihilo, when he wasn’t shooting baskets in the Marriner Eccles building. If they did, they might hear some healthy skepticism about these events in which top officials cash in on their “public service” via contacts with the very industries they benefited while in office.

George Stigler explained such paybacks in his capture theory of regulation for which he received (rightly) the Nobel Prize in Economics, although I’d say they are better explained by the phrase, “quid pro and here-you-go!”......To Read More....

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