“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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