Still not posting about our impending civil war. Hey, Republicans are trying germ warfare now and refusing to go through metal detectors so they can bring their guns onto the House floor! But enough about that. Instead...
I haven't mentioned the columns of our local economics writer Ed Lotterman in a long time. On Sunday, he took up the topic of Janet Yellen and her $7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street. It hasn't gotten a ton of attention in the midst of everything else that's going on, but of course it's not a great look.
I appreciated Lotterman's measured take, which was that it troubles him, but compared to just about everyone else who's been in the job, Yellen's $7 million is nothing so it seems a bit disingenuous for the Very Serious People to suddenly be upset that this woman, with her 50 years of expertise paid at government and academic salary levels, got compensated for it at the rate that people in business get compensated for two years.
...after stepping down at age 71, with a first-term president who repeatedly had excoriated her (and her successor) and thus was probably not likely to be offered another administration job, and retired from decades in academia, why not accept money offered for what she had done as part of moderately paid jobs for years?
She is not culpable in any way. Yet one can also sympathize with the average citizen who saw Wall Street firms treated with kid gloves in the aftermath of the financial debacle a decade ago, saw hundreds of thousands of ordinary families foreclosed upon, and therefore, justifiably, concludes the system is not fair.
It's a broader problem, as Lotterman says, and blaming it on Yellen is not the solution.
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