Inside Job

National Public Radio broadcast an interview last evening with Charles Ferguson, the director of the soon-to-be-released documentary, Inside Job. It is apparently about recent financial shenanigans on Wall Street and the proximate causes of the global financial crisis. The director seemed to be struck about how unlikely it is that top financiers would be heading off to prison. He also was astonished about the pervasive advocacy and lack of ethics he found among economists. He mentioned economists writing articles to promote some industry and not disclosing funding, serving on corporate boards, and acting as expert witnesses in court cases.

NPR played a clip where Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia University School of Business, a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, and a Visiting Scholar (if you can call it that) at the American Enterprise Institute, basically threw Ferguson out of his office. Hubbard apparently did not want to talk about his outside sources of income.

Update: In the comments, Tomboktu links to the NPR piece. Elsewhere, Chris Bertram links to a piece by Charles Ferguson in the Chronicle of Higher Education.