The New York Fed suppresses dissenting expert views through intellectual inbreeding and vertical hiring.

Evidence

The prestigious staff roles relate to the central banking functions: economic research, macro modeling, and of course, monetary policy. PhD monetary economists rule the roost. And there is considerable group think. The organization is very vertical, with little lateral hiring except at the very top levels. The result is intellectual inbreeding. I’m told the public rejection of perspectives that ruffled the Fed’s world view, such as Robert Shiller being pushed off the New York Fed’s economic advisory board after he suggested that there was a housing bubble pre crisis and the dressing down of Raghuram Rajan at Jackson Hole in 2005 is consistent with an internal posture of ignoring people who don’t fall in with the party line. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 2078

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the book’s central ‘thought collective’ thesis — internal institutional homogenization as a mechanism for perpetuating the orthodox economics worldview. — connects to: Suppressed knowledge allows the myth of American decency to endure. — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 1087
• QUESTION: Chase whether Shiller’s removal and Rajan’s dressing-down are documented elsewhere with primary sources beyond Yves Smith’s account.

Broader Connections

• Suppressed knowledge allows the myth of American decency to endure. #corroborates (0.72) — Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Secrets in the…, 1087