How to Break the Wall Street to Washington Merry-Go-Round

Foreign Policy ^ | 10 December 2015 | Pedro Nicolaci da CostaPedro Nicolaci da Costa

[Lorianne]

The revolving door between the big banks and the Federal Reserve isn't just unseemly — it's a time bomb. Here's how to fix it.

Fed Governor Jerome Powell also worked in finance, if not banking. He spent his career in private equity, an industry that uses debt financing to buy, restructure, and then sell firms. Powell worked at Carlyle Group, where he amassed the largest personal fortune of any current Fed official, amounting to tens of millions of dollars.

It’s not that bankers and other financiers are not qualified to be central bankers. An understanding of finance is important to setting interest rate policy, as is having a feel for markets, knowing what to say, and when to say it in order to minimize swings in the economy. The problem arises when the conflict of interest becomes so flagrant that public confidence in the institution — even government itself — is shaken. And after a historic financial crisis caused in great part by reckless banking, it’s not difficult to see why the average taxpayer might be a bit put off.

So how should perturbed citizens go about slowing this merry-go-round of legal but untoward behavior? Solving the problem could be a lot easier than some politicians in Washington would have voters believe.

[Fhios]

The link brings you to a pop up registration window. If you close it, you only get the front page of FP.

From what I could read from the excerpt, I don’t think we’ll find any brilliant reasoning within.