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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)

#41

Post by starkd »

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.

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

#43

Post by sbaiddn »

Eumenes wrote: post #25

These speaking fees HAVE to be kickbacks, right? I've attended a few of these things before and the talks have almost no substance, and the speakers just regurgitate things they've said before in the press or on official business. These don't equate to an industry leader or SME giving a talk on a technical or vocational subject.

Of course! But they're not technically illegal. So you can charge hundreds of thousands of dollars plus expenses for a one hour talk.

They make more per performance than most of the biggest music stars. Consider that the "Friends" stars, at their height, only made $1 million/episode which took far more than ten hours to make and was broadcast and loved by hundreds of millions (if not billions?) around the world.

Obviously it's a graft. But! How do you make this illegal within our constitutional framework? A cure must but be worse than the disease.

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

#44

Post by orwin »

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): a woman, too partisan, friend to Obama/the Clinton (from breibart) and following the rabbit hole, a pedophile. And regular conservative/liberal outlet had nothing to say about her (I'll pass on the critic from the left as it's a critic of institutions and not of the person). It feel weird and unnatural.

Second, even if she is incompetent, caused suffering all over the world as millionaires and billionaires took a haircut, one thing I'm really certain of is that people would rather attack a specific person than what created the position they're in. Or more accurately, point at specifics rather than globals.

It feels like operation scapegoat to me tbh.

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

#45

Post by ramphastidae »

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…

We’ve know for decades - take money out of politics and make it about civil service. To do so requires campaign finance reform (limits on spending and sources of $) as well as making lobbying illegal

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

#46

Post by hgsgm »

throwme_123 wrote: post #30

The US is actually one the most corrupt countries on earth. What makes it worse: They always try to give lessons to the rest of the world, but meh. The result is here: Record homeless Americans, drug addicts in the streets, health crisis, education crisis, while the ruling elite (it's even more hypocritical when it's the left like Yellen) gets even richer. Time for a revolution maybe.

Yellen is center-right, not left.

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

#47

Post by jefftk »

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.

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

#49

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

Eumenes wrote: post #25

These speaking fees HAVE to be kickbacks, right? I've attended a few of these things before and the talks have almost no substance, and the speakers just regurgitate things they've said before in the press or on official business. These don't equate to an industry leader or SME giving a talk on a technical or vocational subject.

There definitely is a kickback aspect, but another one is that they are paying these speakers for the cachet of their "presence". If you spend time in and around some of these events (thinktanks, management consulting, and Wall Street, are especially brutal for this) they are really about signaling competence. It's the same reason that they hire fresh undergrads from almost exclusively ivy leagues regardless of that fresh graduate's major -- the "name brand" of the degree is the signaling for competence. Whether the talks are actually of any substance at all is beside the point (and attendants will actually whine if the talk is too technical). Just getting them in the room and sending out the PR blasts is worth it for the longtail influence on the perception of the org.

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

#50

Post by dtech »

taylodl wrote: post #37
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…

What do you propose? Every party involved has the freedom to associate with whomever they want and the right to conduct business with them. If Yellen was doing a lousy job then presumably far fewer people would be willing to pay her a speaker fee. But hey, if people want to pay her to speak then that's their business.

The problem is it just means money == political power, which purportedly democracies try to not have.
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