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Defending Wall St. Earns Academics Financial Reward
- dredmorbius 13y agoThis association between monied (and especially banking) interests and economic thought is hardly new, though that's not to say it isn't insidious. David Ricardo, the second name in classical economics after Smith, was himself a stockbroker and speculator who, according to Arnold Toynbee, bought a seat in Parliament in large part to spread his views of economics and free trade (Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, also discussed in Ricardo's Wikipedia biography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo). His personal papers were collected and purchased by other bankers (notably John Ramsey McCulloch). Journals such as The Economist were founded expressly to cover and promote specific economic viewpoints: The Economist was founded by the British businessman and banker James Wilson in 1843, to advance the repeal of the Corn Laws, a system of import tariffs.[13] A prospectus for the "newspaper," from 5 August 1843 enumerated thirteen areas of coverage that its editors wanted the newspaper to focus on... ... thirteen areas of coverage, including "Original leading articles, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#History http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2007/01/from_corn_laws_.html http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2007/01/from_corn_la... http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1873493 http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1873493 Numerous other academic and research institutions have similarly been strongly associated with specific business and/or banking interests. The Times piece is only the latest coverage of a very long history of this influence.