Take another illustrious Harvard economist, Martin Feldstein. Among other ties to the key crisis institutions, he had been on the board of AIG for twenty-two years, only to conveniently resign from his duties on June 30, 2009. He had also been chair of its finance committee and risk management, and therefore was formally directly responsible for the disastrous AIG Financial Products division, whose credit default swaps and other unsustainable derivatives brought down the company. For his services there he accrued more than $6 million, and has apparently never suffered any ostracism for saddling the Treasury with a shell of a remnant of an insurance behemoth that is still hemorrhaging money. Indeed, none of this seemed an obstacle to President Obama appointing him to his Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board in 2009, and his Tax Policy task force thereafter.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 564