Really interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today: Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics.
There’s a lot to unpack (read the whole thing), but one strong point the article makes is this:
Over the past 30 years, the economics profession—in economics departments, and in business, public policy, and law schools—has become so compromised by conflicts of interest that it now functions almost as a support group for financial services and other industries whose profits depend heavily on government policy. The route to the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic problems that still plague us, runs straight through the economics discipline. And it’s due not just to ideology; it’s also about straightforward, old-fashioned money.