

Defending Wall St. Earns Academics Financial Reward - mjfern
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/business/academics-who-defend-wall-st-reap-reward.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

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dredmorbius
This association between monied (and especially banking) interests and
economic thought is hardly new, though that's not to say it isn't insidious.

David Ricardo, the second name in classical economics after Smith, was himself
a stockbroker and speculator who, according to Arnold Toynbee, bought a seat
in Parliament in large part to spread his views of economics and free trade (
_Lectures on the Industrial Revolution_ , also discussed in Ricardo's
Wikipedia biography
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo)).
His personal papers were collected and purchased by other bankers (notably
John Ramsey McCulloch).

Journals such as The Economist were founded expressly to cover _and promote_
specific economic viewpoints:

 _The Economist was founded by the British businessman and banker James Wilson
in 1843, to advance the repeal of the Corn Laws, a system of import
tariffs.[13] A prospectus for the "newspaper," from 5 August 1843 enumerated
thirteen areas of coverage that its editors wanted the newspaper to focus
on..._

... thirteen areas of coverage, including "Original leading articles, in which
free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important
questions of the day."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#History)

[http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2007/01/from_corn_la...](http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2007/01/from_corn_laws_.html)

[http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1873493](http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1873493)

Numerous other academic and research institutions have similarly been strongly
associated with specific business and/or banking interests.

The _Times_ piece is only the latest coverage of a very long history of this
influence.

