Hey HBS Dean Nohria, how about dealing with this issue with your own faculty, instead of Grandstanding to the kids and trained seals at your convocations?????
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/12/20/business/business-us-academics-conflicts.html?_r=2December 20, 2010
Special Report: For Some Professors, Disclosure Is Academic
By REUTERS
Filed at 11:11 a.m. ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - When Hal Scott testified on financial reform before the Senate last February, he identified himself simply as a Harvard Law School professor and director of an independent research group.
He also had some other relevant experience: Scott is on the board of Lazard, a prominent Wall Street firm with no small interest in the outcome of regulatory reform. He did not bother to mention this association during his testimony.
Scott, who was paid about $260,000 in cash and stock by Lazard in 2009, did not break any rules by not pointing out his industry ties. The Senate Banking Committee does not require academics to disclose their corporate affiliations.
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AND LOTS OF OTHER EXAMPLES
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A growing number of critics are calling for change. They argue that disclosing industry relationships should be mandatory for academics who appear before the people's elected representatives as independent experts.
SAY DEAN NOHRIA, HOW ABOUT GETTING BEHIND SOMETHING LIKE THIS, WHICH IS, DUH REAL, UNLIKE YOUR SILLY BOY SCOUT HONOR PLEDGES.
"If someone is presented as a disinterested expert, but they actually have a financial relationship with someone with an interest in what they are talking about, that leaves the members of the public in the dark and sometimes members of the committee as well," said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation.
NAH, COME ON.....
Yet this happens routinely. A Reuters review of 96 testimonies given by 82 academics to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee between late 2008 and early 2010 -- as lawmakers debated the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s -- found no clear standard for disclosure.
In fact, roughly a third did not reveal their financial affiliations in their testimonies, based on a comparison of the text of their testimonies available on the Congressional committees' websites with their resumes available online.
Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of business, appeared before Congress three times during the period reviewed by Reuters to testify about the U.S. mortgage market.
At no point did she mention her consulting gigs for global real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle and GE Financial because she saw the work she was doing for the firms, respectively on Canadian subprime housing and New York City rents, as too tangential to matter.
YEAH, WHY BOTHER, IT IS SUCH A CHORE TO EVEN SAY THOSE WORDS. I MEAN CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY IS SO SHORT AND TO THE POINT, WHO HAS TIME FOR THIS.
FAIR AND BALANCED
John Geanakoplos, a professor at Yale testifying on housing to the House Financial Services Committee identified himself as a partner in Ellington Management, LLC "a hedge fund that trades mortgage-backed securities."
Anil Kashyap a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, disclosed in a footnote to his prepared remarks that he is a consultant for the Clearing House, which is owned by 20 banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo.
GEE WAS THAT SO HARD?????
DUFFIE AND MOODY'S
Darrell Duffie, a Stanford financial economist. In April 2009, Duffie participated in an event exploring the roots of the financial crisis.
Duffie had recently been appointed to the board of governors of Moody's Corp., the ratings agency, but he identified himself only by his academic credentials.
At the panel's conclusion, Duffie took two questions related to the crisis, the second of which is directly related to ratings agencies, still not revealing his links to Moody's.
"It is only on the third question where the questioner explicitly asks whether ratings agencies have a conflict of interest -- in that they are paid by the companies they rate -- that Duffie reveals he is on the board of Moody's,"
HEY THEY DID NOT ASK
Another much-discussed example: Frederic Mishkin, a former governor of the influential Federal Reserve Board in Washington now teaching at Columbia, wrote a glowing paper about Iceland's financial system in 2006 -- for which he was paid by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce. Two years later, the country's financial system collapsed.
MUCH DISCUSSED BECAUSE IT IS AN HYSTERICAL 10 MINUTES OF INSIDE JOB MOVIE, AND THIS GUY IS IN THE RUNNING FOR CLOWN OF THE YEAR, YOU REALLY GOTTA SEE THAT PICTURE.
. . .. AND ,MANY OTHER EXAMLPES-FULL STORY WORTH SEEING, AND WORTH PUSHING IN ANY DEAN'S FACE WHO IS TELLING YOU, THE KIDS, TO BE ETHICAL, ASK HIM HOW FRIGGIN ETHICAL HIS OWN FACULTY IS.
AND GO SEE INSIDE JOB.
20 Dec 2010, 13:45
