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Calls for nuance are missing the point. Nuance is exactly what we need less of, nuance is the trees that hide the forest. Does Yellen have some professional et

Calls for nuance are missing the point. Nuance is exactly what we need less of, nuance is the trees that hide the forest. Does Yellen have some professional ethics that guard against her acting in a way that overly favors businesses that have her millions of dollars? I think she does. Are those ethics effective as a guard against corruption in the same way that, well, not taking millions of dollars would be? I doubt it. Money talks. Maybe even more importantly, it severely hurts the legitimacy of government. How are you supposed to convince people you're on their side if you're making millions from the other side? If your lawyer was getting paid more than you could ever pay to share his wisdom with the other side over a fancy lunch, and then you lost the case, you would have every right to doubt their integrity--even if they had done nothing wrong. The US would have would have a lot less problems with conservative populism if the centrist technocratic impulse wasn't so often so tone deaf.

JoeyBananas 6y ago
If someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something, I personally wouldn't have any ethical problems with that. That's really all the author is accusing Yellen of. There is nothing in this article that says "Here is exactly how Yellen is abusing her power," all the article says is "she accepted money from banks!"
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  >If someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something But why would they do that without the implicit expectation of quid pro quo? Or more to the point, the past experience of quid pro quo, as it's obviously a one-of instance. You're attributing irrational behavior to billion-dollar CEOs. If Lyft regularly paid the chief software engineer for Uber a million dollars for having lunch with their CEO, the commenters here wouldn't be doing this wishy-washy "it's just a completely ethical lunch" crap.

JoeyBananas 6y ago

If someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something, I personally wouldn't have any ethical problems with that. That's really all the author is accusing Yellen of. There is nothing in this article that says "Here is exactly how Yellen is abusing her power," all the article says is "she accepted money from banks!"

LordDragonfang 6y ago
>If someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something But why would they do that without the implicit expectation of quid pro quo? Or more to the point, the past experience of quid pro quo, as it's obviously a one-of instance. You're attributing irrational behavior to billion-dollar CEOs. If Lyft regularly paid the chief software engineer for Uber a million dollars for having lunch with their CEO, the commenters here wouldn't be doing this wishy-washy "it's just a completely ethical lunch" crap.