The AIG stint was only the most high-profile corporate directorship held by Feldstein, disclosed in part because the news media speculated that the reason he was not appointed Federal Reserve chair by George Bush back in 2005 was this politically problematic connection. He has also served as a director of Morgan Guarantee Trust, and in his dual capacity as a health care economist, previously was on the board of HCA Inc., and has been on the board of directors of Eli Lilly since 2002. His annual compensation for the Lilly position alone is $300,000 per year. Feldstein has been a staunch neoliberal his whole life, starting out with a critique of the British National Health Service, and has been credited with transforming the Harvard undergraduate economics curriculum from its prior breadth to a narrow orthodox boot camp with strong neoliberal inclinations. Feldstein served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under Ronald Reagan, and took with him as staffers Larry Summers, Gregory Mankiw, and Paul Krugman. His protégés are salted throughout the East Coast economic establishment. He is a master of navigating the interlocking directorates of finance and academia, arranging, for instance, to have the Starr Foundation (controlled by the former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg) to make numerous grants to Harvard and the NBER when he was head of that latter institution.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 565