More on Mary Jo: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022261421

What do you know about Wall Street? lol

Regulatory capture is the word.

Long long ago in a different life Janet Yellen was on my Masters committee.

The topic was on a new type of what was then referred to as a "synthetic security".

After the 1987 market crash, the advantages of the specific security structure were de fanged by a change in the tax code in 1989.

Yellen was a bad appointment under Clinton and also under Obama. She sucked as a professor and I was a faceless grad student she rubber stamped.

Before going to business school, I had worked 16 years for the Feds in research and management of an applied hard science and as a regulator. I quit feeling used and dirty and wanted a fresh start.

Several other B-school profs took a special interest in me and introduced me to some very prominent people. I did not know whether to be flattered or disturbed by how much they already knew about me.

Even before I graduated I was working for a small historic management consulting firm that advised on M&A in several related specific industries and did public policy work geared to favor the needs and financing of large corporations and making profit from transactions. Just like with the Feds, I justified that I was working from my heart and not for the trappings, so rather me than someone else.

Some of the principals of our clients went to prison and were banned from the securities industry for life and their firms dissolved. Others row merrily along or have consolidated with their former competitors and others are too big to fail.

Five years later, one of the seven managing partners left to be Deputy Secretary of -------- and I was offered and had been groomed to be the next successor. Instead I quit as I felt dirty again and ashamed for having felt so intoxicated for a time. I never could feel right about what happened in corporate offices where deals were structured, assets valued, and influence planned. I could not commit to that life.

Somewhere in a box I have a collection of several billion dollars worth of Plexiglas tombstones. I haven't read a WSJ since the 20th century except for occasional links on the internet.

I divorced my wife in 1999 because I knew she would have little interest or ability in returning to the lifestyle I lived as a child on a remote National Forest inholding that was my great grandfather's gold mine and farm.

So now I am in my 60s and live a simple life and feel dismal about the state of the world and what we are leaving for our children. Disconnected the satellite dish for TV several years ago.

My Dad with an 8th grade education was right about many things. I rebelled by going to work for the Feds and going off to that hippie school. Our family religion growing up was fly fishing, mineral prospecting, and hunting. I haven't hunted since I was 18, the heretic son, and prefer hippie garb to coat and tie; sun, soil, trees, and water to cement, steel, and glass. I have felt misunderstood and out of place most of my life. My Dad said I was like my Mom in that my emotions got in my way. So it goes.

She and Ted Kaufman (took over for Biden) seem to be the only two in Washington not owned by the banksters

Moyers lays it out clearly and simply. K&R.

The corporatrocracy already writes legislation and owns lawmakers.
And now this, the SEC. They have the FCC too.

Had enough yet, America?

to an important economic position after having served late under Clinton and under GWB.

I am going to spill some beans about my sordid history and fill the holes in my earlier post.

The business school is the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

A "synthetic security" is another name for a derivative.

I don't think anyone at DU has ever discussed Yellen. My negative opinion is in my first post in this thread.

From wiki:

Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist and professor, who is the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Previously, she was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Yellen served as chair of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers from February 13, 1997[3] to 1999, and was appointed as a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997. She has taught at Harvard University and at the London School of Economics. Yellen serves as president of the Western Economic Association International and is a former vice president of the American Economic Association. She is a fellow of the Yale Corporation.

On June 14, 2004, Yellen became the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She was a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in 2009.

snip

In July 2009, Yellen was mentioned as a potential successor to Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve System, before he was renominated by Barack Obama.[5]

snip
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On April 28, 2010, President Obama nominated Yellen to succeed Donald Kohn as vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve System.[6] In July, "[t]he Senate Banking Committee voted 17 to 6 to confirm her, though the top Republican on the panel, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted no, saying he believed Ms. Yellen had an 'inflationary bias.'" At the same time, on the heels of concerned testimony by Fed chair Bernanke, FOMC voting member James B. Bullard of the St. Louis Fed made a statement that the U.S. economy was "at risk of becoming 'enmeshed in a Japanese-style deflationary outcome within the next several years.'" Bullard's statement was interpreted as a possible shift within the FOMC balance between inflation hawks and doves. Yellen's pending confirmation, along with those of Peter A. Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin to fill vacancies, was seen as possibly furthering such a shift in the FOMC. All three nominations were seen as "on track to be confirmed by the Senate."[7]

On October 4, 2010, Yellen was sworn in for a 4-year term ending October 4, 2014. Dr. Yellen simultaneously began a 14-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board that will expire January 31, 2024.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Yellen