Foreclosure-Gate and The Ministry of Truth

04-13-2011 • NakedCapitalism.com/

In real academic disciplines, investigators and professors who serve big corporate funders have their output viewed with appropriate skepticism, and if they do so often enough, their reputation takes a permanent hit. Scientists who went into the employ of tobacco companies could anticipate they’d never leave that backwater. Even the great unwashed public knows that drug company funded research isn’t what it is cracked up to be. But in the never-never realm of reality denial within the Beltway, as long as you can get a PhD or better to grace the latest offering from the Ministry of Truth, it gives useful cover to Congresscritters and other message amplifiers who will spout whatever big donor nonsense they are being asked to endorse this week. The Academy Award winning documentary Inside Job depicted how the fish has rotted from the head in the economics academy...