"Mr. Hubbard also brings to this job a certain amount of baggage. He appeared briefly in “Inside Job,” a scathing and Oscar-winning 2010 documentary about the financial crisis. The film has a segment about high-profile professors who blessed many of the financial instruments that led to the fiasco. Enter Mr. Hubbard, who is presented as a leading thinker far too cozy with industries he ought to be assessing at a critical distance....
" But in Mr. Hubbard’s case, some of his amply compensated work takes policy stands that buttress the viewpoints of the corporate interests that are paying him.
"That’s been true of the mutual fund industry, which has paid him more than $1 million over the years. In an academic paper and a book, he took a strong position favoring the industry’s approach to fees, which critics say hurt everyday investors. He was paid what he called an honorarium of $150,000 for the academic paper by the insurance arm of the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade and lobbying group.
“Dean Hubbard is a mercenary,” says John P. Freeman, emeritus professor of business and professional ethics at the University of South Carolina School of Law, who has accused the mutual fund industry of profiteering, “out to protect fund managers who are taking advantage of investors.”
"Mr. Hubbard says the source of funding is irrelevant because his academic writing stands on its own...
"While serving under President Bush as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, he pushed to reduce dividend taxes to zero. (Ultimately, the top tax rate on dividends was cut by more than half, to 15 percent.) ...
"“I am comfortable that I balance my scholarship and teaching, deanship, and outside activities very well.”
"That balance has included work for many corporations that have generated unflattering headlines in recent years. On his résumé, in the category of “consulting or advisory relationships,” Mr. Hubbard lists Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. He was co-author of a paper with William C. Dudley, then the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, titled “How Capital Markets Enhance Economic Performance and Facilitate Job Creation,” which praised derivatives and the housing boom in 2004, as both were inflating into an epic bubble...."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/busin … f=politics
