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Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

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Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#71

Post by vlovich123 »

beeforpork wrote: post #34
syzarian wrote: post #12

That many people find this acceptable is disconcerting. We have a revolving door system whereby the top regulator knows they will get a nice payout by the regulated after their days of regulating end. Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury got a very high paying job after his repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Clinton’s themselves were richly rewarded by Wall Street. Therein lies one of the curses of wealth inequality. Humans…

That is all true. But who wants to be a politician when they are public figures that are beaten, accused, humiliated by opponents, the public, and everyone really. You cannot do it right and most people will probably hate you, regardless of what you do. It's not a pleasant job. Unless you get money for all of this unpleasantness. And then, some entities have more money to give than others (you said that in your last…

Pay so well for the role and have a sufficient pension such that you are forbidden from receiving any kind of further compensation even when you are no longer in the role (or in kind gift or direct charitable contributions). Honestly, US congress people should be paid in the high hundreds of thousands for the work they do and the control they have over the world’s largest economy. It’s kind of ridiculous how low information voters think it’s ok to punish politicians for increasing salaries but ignore the actual budget and what we spend money on because that’s complicated.

Think of it another way. Is there any other CEO or even senior director that couldn’t afford to live near their HQ? And yet, that’s true if you’re a congressperson that’s not independently wealthy. Said another way, we’re unhappy paying politician’s money from the government directly but then complain that all the politician’s are the super wealthy or find alternate income streams? This is very intentional by the way - it’s very convenient for the wealthy in the US to have a political class that is either filled with direct peers or protects them because that’s where the real money comes from even if it’s net parasitic to the US as a whole.

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#73

Post by javajosh »

aqme28 wrote: post #22
javajosh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a personal failing. Janet Yellen could have told them to fly a kite.

When the system massively incentivizes personal failures, that is also a failure of a system

The system always has and always will massively incentivize personal failures. That's why humans invented the concept of a "good person" -- it describes one who actively swims against the omnipresent tide. It's why people used to speak about "character" in politics. The tacit assumption is that once you're in power you are, by definition, unrestrained by external forces. The only one left who can restrain you is yourself.

It would be wise to highlight these talks as examples of profound personal failures, both for the speakers and the participants. All have succumbed to greed and corruption, and have done so in the open. I think we should promote the ideals of self-restraint once again, and expect our public servants to enjoy a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, and no more.

The single best thing we can do is to get money out of politics! The bottleneck to getting elected is, right now, money, and that's fundamentally anti-democratic. We should elect people based on their character, their ideas, their vision, their capacity for communication, and not their bank account. They should demonstrate that they value principle over loyalty, basically every time. In such a world Yellen's behavior would stick out like a sore thumb, and that's good.

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#74

Post by jefftk »

starkd wrote: post #54
jefftk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does earning money from selling a book hurt your incentives to do a good job as a politician? It seems to me it makes them better: there's less temptation to take money from industries you were involved in regulating, and your book will sell better if people think you did good work in office.

You can't possibly be this naive. The people giving them money have access to power. Even a former president has plenty of contacts within the government as well as the public stage. They can be enormously persuasive on issues with the attention they get.

While it's a lot of money it's not out of keeping with the kind of sales they would have expected for his book. In it's first month "A Promised Land" sold 3.3M copies [1] and was the best selling book in the US for 2020! It's not clear to me what sort of "access to power" connections Penguin Random House would be getting out of this, and it's very clear that they got a lot of sales.

[1] https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/announcements/a-promis...

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#75

Post by vlovich123 »

starkd wrote: post #41
tannhauser23 wrote: post #15

Whenever I see a politician or regulator arrested for accepting bribes, I think, what an amateur. American elites have perfected the art of the grift: do a turn in government or academy, and then become a ‘thought leader’ or form an NGO and collect speaking fees from Wall Street and foreign powers. Wait for your party to get back in power, do another round in government, rinse and repeat. Even the Presidency and Prim…

The turning point was the Clinton administration. Before that, no former president would dare sully the office by accepting honorarium or speaking fees. At least, not nearly on the scale Clinton took it to.

Naw. Carter was the last one. Reagan was taking large speaking fees. The Bushes may have avoided doing so too much but they’re “old money”.

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#76

Post by boeingUH60 »

yeahsure22 wrote: post #53
orwin wrote: post #44

The issue I have with those attacks on Yellen are two-fold : First, as this article show, they come from everywhere (ie she's at the same time a sellout and not listening to the banking industry), and are very sudden. If she was incompetent from the start, it would have been different, but from what I read pre 2023, the main concern for right wing guys is that she was (ordered from likely to be true to less likely):…

[flagged]

On this same thread, I have seen comments about Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, and Barney Frank. Is it really sexist to complain that a well-known public official gets paid millions of dollars (while out of office for a short period) by the same institutions that she eventually gets to regulate?

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#77

Post by washadjeffmad »

beeforpork wrote: post #34
syzarian wrote: post #12

That many people find this acceptable is disconcerting. We have a revolving door system whereby the top regulator knows they will get a nice payout by the regulated after their days of regulating end. Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury got a very high paying job after his repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Clinton’s themselves were richly rewarded by Wall Street. Therein lies one of the curses of wealth inequality. Humans…

That is all true. But who wants to be a politician when they are public figures that are beaten, accused, humiliated by opponents, the public, and everyone really. You cannot do it right and most people will probably hate you, regardless of what you do. It's not a pleasant job. Unless you get money for all of this unpleasantness. And then, some entities have more money to give than others (you said that in your last…

Be Bernie Sanders, apparently.

The bar is pretty low. Don't be an obvious crook or treat yourself like you're in a different class and flout it. Don't vote party lines if it doesn't reflect your constituency, and encourage grassroots involvement and policy voting.

Identity politics drove people off the deep end, because if you disliked Clinton's track record of neoliberal politics, her flagrant corruption and disdain for the working class, and penchant for globalism, then you failed the loyalty test and could be freely ostracized as a secret bigot or false flag operator.

That should have been quashed hard by journalists, but the media lined up, and then Big Tech started putting their fingers on the scales, and we were all left worse off for it.

Trust is earned over a lifetime of accountability and consistency, but that's harder than taking payouts from special interests and voting how your party wants. As they say, eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#78

Post by hgsgm »

jefftk wrote: post #47
boeingUH60 wrote: post #27

One of the most notable deals I heard about for a politician was Obama getting a $65 million book advance [1] shortly after leaving office. I get that Obama's books sell a lot, but damn, that's huge. It's obvious that once you become a high-ranking politician (especially President, VP, or a similar high-level position), wealth awaits you once you leave office. What's then the incentive to serve the people if you know…

How does earning money from selling a book hurt your incentives to do a good job as a politician? It seems to me it makes them better: there's less temptation to take money from industries you were involved in regulating, and your book will sell better if people think you did good work in office.

Buying books in bulk (not for reading) is a standard way to bribe a politician, by laundering campaign funds to personal funds, or even sloppy direct purchases.

Several politicians have been caught, from local to national.

One example;

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/gop-book-deal...

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#79

Post by vlovich123 »

vuln wrote: post #65
janalsncm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Trump lose money? Seems almost impossible to fully account for all of his assets before and after his presidency.

I don't know really. I didn't see a 65 million dollar book advance. He wasn't too quick to hit the paid speaking engagements. Never ending lawsuits, more lawsuits don't really seem to be making him money...

His money is tied up in his brand. Everyone constantly talking about him is his brand and he’s very much in the school of thought that “all publicity is good publicity”.

Re: Yellen earned millions in speaking fees from Wall St, tech firms (2021)

#80

Post by hgsgm »

jefftk wrote: post #74
starkd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't possibly be this naive. The people giving them money have access to power. Even a former president has plenty of contacts within the government as well as the public stage. They can be enormously persuasive on issues with the attention they get.

While it's a lot of money it's not out of keeping with the kind of sales they would have expected for his book. In it's first month "A Promised Land" sold 3.3M copies [1] and was the best selling book in the US for 2020! It's not clear to me what sort of "access to power" connections Penguin Random House would be getting out of this, and it's very clear that they got a lot of sales. [1] https://global.penguinrandomho…

The advance is fine. The buyers are suspect. (Though in this case, the buyers are likely largely a broad base of interested citizens. Rich Democratic Party women like buying books. )
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