It is an open secret that junior Fed positions are considered consolation prizes within the economics discipline: what you get for a first job if you graduate with a PhD from a top-ranked department in the areas of macro/money, but fail to land an academic post at another top-tier department. The movers and shakers are, rather, given the plum consulting contracts, appointed visiting positions, and other perks. Both are entryways into subsequent work for the financial sector. Hence the Fed manages to curry favor with a number of strata of the profession simultaneously with forging links to the financial sector, building a deep bench for support of the kinds of positions exemplified by Bernanke in this chapter. The net result is an interlocking directorate of the self-defined "orthodoxy," which has been able to recruit, sustain, and promote its members almost on a par with the neoliberal Russian doll itself.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 529