Fed jobs serve as career consolation prizes that build an interlocking orthodoxy

Evidence

It is an open secret that junior Fed positions are considered consolation prizes within the economics discipline: what you get for a first job if you graduate with a PhD from a top-ranked department in the areas of macro/money, but fail to land an academic post at another top-tier department. The movers and shakers are, rather, given the plum consulting contracts, appointed visiting positions, and other perks. Both are entryways into subsequent work for the financial sector. Hence the Fed manages to curry favor with a number of strata of the profession simultaneously with forging links to the financial sector, building a deep bench for support of the kinds of positions exemplified by Bernanke in this chapter. The net result is an interlocking directorate of the self-defined “orthodoxy,” which has been able to recruit, sustain, and promote its members almost on a par with the neoliberal Russian doll itself. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 529

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘interlocking directorate’ echoes the ‘thought collective’ theme of earlier chapters, and the Russian-doll framing ties into the whole book’s central metaphor. — connects to: The Federal Reserve dominates economics as a funder and employer — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 528; Reagan-era appointments turned the Fed into a channel for neoliberalizing economics — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 529

Broader Connections

• The Federal Reserve dominates economics as a funder and employer #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 528
• Reagan-era appointments turned the Fed into a channel for neoliberalizing economics #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 529