Academia is supposed to be a place of scholarship, an environment free of conflicting interests and only dedicated to the search for knowledge. But according to a report by The New York Times Wall Street has weaseled their way into the ivory tower to slant the scholarship in their favor. Those academics who play ball and support the views Wall Street likes are handsomely rewarded. Those that don’t have to live on their relatively modest salaries.
Financial ties among professors promoting speculation and the banks and trading firms that profit from it date back to the beginning of the recent commodities boom, which got an intellectual kick-start from academia. After Congress and the Clinton administration deregulated the commodities markets in 2000, and the Securities and Exchange Commission lowered capital requirements on investment banks in 2004, the financial giants began developing new funds to capitalize on the opportunity.
Enter the well paid promoters of the new status quo, some of whom have a PhD after their name such as Professor Craig Pirrong from the University of Houston. Pirrong is a leading advocate for keeping