October 01, 2010

A movie to watch for

It's called "Inside Job," and it's the story of Wall Street and the global recession.

"I had grossly underestimated the level of extraordinarily unethical and even fraudulent behavior that had occurred on such a large scale,"
says Charles Ferguson, the film's director.

One of the things that startled me was Ferguson's assertion that Glenn Hubbard, now Dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Business (!), testified as an expert witness in the trial of two Bear Stearns executives acquitted of fraud in November of 2009. Hubbard, you may recall, was Chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers for the first two years of Bush's first term. The act that he testified on their behalf didn't necessarily startle me; what did was the assertion (presumably gleaned from court transcripts) that Hubbard was paid $100,000 to do so.

Ferguson's point in citing Hubbard's payment is that as far as he (Ferguson) can tell, many academic economists have sold their expertise to Wall Street at the expense of their honesty.

Listen here.

Posted by Linkmeister at October 1, 2010 01:55 PM | TrackBack
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