Excerpt: The sellout of the ivory tower, and the crash of 2008


Re-printed from Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America; Copyright © 2012 by Charles Ferguson. Published by Crown Business, a division of Random House, Inc.

Many people who saw my documentary film about the 2008 economic crisis, Inside Job, found that the most surprising, and disturbing, portion of the film was its revelation of widespread conflicts of interest in universities, think tanks, and among prominent academic experts on finance, economics, business, and government regulation. Viewers who watched my interviews with eminent professors were stunned at what came out of their mouths. Over the last thirty years, in parallel with deregulation and the rising power of money in American politics, significant portions of American academia have deteriorated into “pay to play” activities. These days, if you see a famous economics professor testify in Congress, appear on television news, testify in a legal case or regulatory proceeding, give a speech, or write an opinion article in the New York Times (or the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, or anywhere else), there is a high probability that he or she is being paid by someone with a big stake in what’s being debated. Most of the time, these professors do not disclose these conflicts of interest, and most of the time their universities look the other way…

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